What is .NET Assembly?

 .NET Assembly is the components developed with Microsoft.NET.

.NET Assembly may or may not be executable.

All .NET Assemebly contains the definition of types, versoning information of type, metadata, and manifest.

An Assembly can be a single file or may consists multiple file. 

Also Read: What is GAC?

Types of Assembly:

There are 3 types of Assembly:

 1. Private Assembly
 2. Shared Assembly
 3. Sattelite Assembly

Private Assembly:

Private Assembly need to copy separately all the application folders, where we need to use that private assembly functionality.

Without copying Private Assembly, we can't access Private Assembly power and features. 

Private Assembly need to copy everytime in the BIN folder of each application folder.

Public Assembly:

Public Assembly not required/needed to copy separately into all application folders.

Public Assembly also known as Shared Assembly.

One one copy of Public Assembly is required in System level, there is no need to copy the required Assembly into the application folder.

Satellite Assembly

 

Satellite assemblies are used when deploying language and culture-specific resources for an application.

What is GAC?

 GAC - Global Assembly Cache

When a Assembly required/needed for more than one project or application, then we need to make Assebly with a strong name keep it in GAC or in Assembly folder by installing the Assembly with a different version.

Also Read: What is Assembly?

Where is GAC located?

You can find GAC from %windir%\assembly:

And final location as: