Summary

This chapter focused on deploying applications and some of the tools available to make that task easier and more reliable. It illustrated the problems that are faced by those who are trying to install Windows applications today. The chapter then looked at how .NET addresses and solves many of these problems. It discussed the two types of installations, private and shared, and the advantages and disadvantages of both. You learned how to sign an assembly and place it in the Global Assembly Cache where it can be shared. You also discovered how the GAC supports multiple versions of an assembly running simultaneously. You saw three different methods for upgrading or changing the normal binding policy, which is to bind to the assembly to which the application was built. Finally, you explored a common scenario in which an assembly needs to be updated with a different version, and how that is handled with an application policy file, a publisher policy file, and a machine policy file.