Just some thoughts on Breaking the dependency of the client on a specific set of server dlls

Breaking the dependency of the client on a specific set of server dlls

• Desktop software will always be compiled to talk to a specific dll version.
• Should a bug fix be made on the server, then at the moment the new dll will not be found by the client software.

Solution

See http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/howto/doc/version.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconcreatingpublisherpolicyfile.asp

Pre-requisite – Called assemblies must be installed in GAC to allow side-by-side versioning

• Use a publisher policy, this will allow us to deploy change the version of dll that the exe links to, and in theory this will also allow us to wipe patches when we perform a major version upgrade. (see also attached diagram)

Note

This also means we don’t have to change from the standard auto-incrementing AssemblyVersion in assemblyInfo.cs