Location of .NET Assemblies

The location of .NET assemblies is managed by .NET run time and not by Jade. Assemblies that are shared with many different applications are usually loaded into the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), which resides in the Windows directory.

Assemblies are normally loaded into the GAC by the components installer and must meet certain requirements (such as having a strong name). It is also possible to create a private cache for the assembly or to store it in a specified directory.

The common location for an assembly is the GAC or the Jade bin directory (or a subdirectory). If you have imported a strongly named assembly, the first location checked is the GAC. If the assembly is not found in the GAC or it is a weakly named assembly, the directory of the executable (jade.exe) is checked.

You can use an XML configuration file in the same directory as the executable to specify an alternative location for an assembly. The name of the configuration file must be the same as that of the executable file but with the .exe extension replaced with .config (for example, jade.config).

The following example specifies that the .NET run time should check the controls directory, which is a subdirectory of the directory in which jade.exe is found.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <runtime>
        <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
            <probing privatePath="controls" />
        </assemblyBinding>
    </runtime>
</configuration>