Building VB.NET Assemblies

Every VB.Net assembly has four parts in it. They are a user friendly name, a version number, culture setting, and a public key token. The version of an assembly by default would be 0.0.0.0 if you do not set any.

You can set the version number by placing the code <Assembly: AssemblyVersion (“1.0.30.3”)> at the top of the source code. For this you have to import the System.Reflection namespace too. The culture setting in the assembly localizes the assembly for a particular language.

The last part of the assembly is the public key and it is unique. Since the public key is very large a public key token which is an 8 byte value is used. Each public key token corresponds to one public key. This gives a strong name to an assembly. A public and private key pair is needed for a strong assembly.

The private key is for generating the digital signature for an assembly. Use the code <Assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(“..\filenameKey.snk”)> at the top of the project source so that the assembly gets a strong name while it is built.