[thelist] adding directories to the dotNet Local Assembly cache...

[Anthony Baratta]

Howdy...

I'm playing around with setting up assemblies that are shared among dotNetapplication on the same server. There are two ways, adding the assemblies to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) or adding directories to the "application probe" directory path.

Now - adding to the GAC requires strong named assemblies. I've tried to follow the info here:

http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/04/28/strongnaming.html
http://aspalliance.com/394

to setup a strong named assembly - but when I add the assembly to the GAC via:

gacutil /i sample.dll

its not available. I get a namespace not found type error. And the assembly does not show up in the list of registered assemblies via the Framework Configuration Tool. So I thought I could add a virtual directory to the application directory tree and then add that directory to the "application probe" directory path. 

e.g. web.config
<configuration>
  <runtime>
     <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <probing privatePath="bin\sbin"/>
    </assemblyBinding>
  </runtime>
</configuration>

but that didn't seem to work either, and I tried a few combinations of paths and slashes for the privatePath attribute.

So, has anyone here successfully created string named assemblies and stored them in the GAC? Or modified the probe directory paths so that the Framework will look in other directories besides "bin".

Thanks in advance.