entropia

I don’t know if this is “common knowledge”, but it can be very confusing if you don’t know what’s going on. If you try to browse to another computer’s Global Assembly Cache (e.g. \\otherbox\c$\Windows\assembly), Explorer will pretend to show you that computer’s GAC, but will actually show you your own.

I have two computers, sphere and cube, in a network. Here’s the view from sphere of both GACs (sphere on the left):

And here’s the view from cube of both GACs (cube on the left):

It’s obvious when you look at all 4 windows in both screenshots, but if you only look at one GAC at a time it’s hard to tell what’s going on. Especially if you’re looking on the networked computer for an assembly that’s installed on your computer.

This happened at work today. A new version of an assembly needed to be in the GAC on a development machine. It showed up in Explorer, but the application that used it wouldn’t work unless it was also placed in the bin directory.

If you need to view another computer’s GAC, either use “tree” from a command prompt or use remote desktop.

Aside: In order to access an administrative share (e.g. \\otherbox\c$) in Vista or Windows 7, you have to make a registry edit. Paul Spourry explains how.