the global assembly cache (GAC) is a code cache that can be used on any machine with an installed CLR (for example, Pocket PC in CF.NET has been installed). Assemblies designed to be shared across applications can be stored here, and they must have a strong name. Note that the assembly with GAC installed must have a matching assembly name and file name, excluding the file extension (so MyAssembly must be paired with MyAssembly.dll or MyAssembly.exe).

what are the benefits of installing an assembly in GAC? A * * * shared location means that RAM-based installation does not need to have duplicate DLLs (same version and same file name) to consume valuable space. Parallel versions allow multiple versions of the same DLL name to be available to CF.NET applications. At compile time, assemblies store the version information of the assembly that they were generated according to, which means that they will always run with the same assembly version. Therefore, even if a newer version of this DLL is available, the assembly will continue to use the old DLL, thus preventing any type of downward incompatibility. Other benefits are using GAC on the desktop, but not with the compression framework * * *.

all CF.NET base class libraries are installed in GAC, so what are you waiting for? You may have noticed the files prefixed with "GAC" in the \Windows directory of Pocket PC. The CLR will access the Cgautil.exe utility to update the GAC with information about installed GAC assemblies. To install your assembly into GAC, first sign it with a strong name, and then include a text file (extension. GAC) such as a CAB file during your application deployment. This. GAC file needs to be placed in the \Windows directory and should be encoded in ANSI or UTF-8 (without Unicode).