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Mark assemblies with assembly version

  • Article

TypeName

MarkAssembliesWithAssemblyVersion

CheckId

CA1016

Category

Microsoft.Design

Breaking Change

NonBreaking

Cause

The assembly does not have a version number.

Rule Description

The identity of an assembly is composed of the following information:

  • Assembly name

  • Version number

  • Culture

  • Public key (for strong-named assemblies).

The .NET Framework uses the version number to uniquely identify an assembly, and to bind to types in strong-named assemblies. The version number is used toghether with version and publisher policy. By default, applications run only with the assembly version with which they were built.

How to Fix Violations

To fix a violation of this rule, add a version number to the assembly using the System.Reflection.AssemblyKeyFileAttribute attribute. See the followihg example.

When to Exclude Warnings

Do not exclude a warning from this rule for assemblies that are used by third parties, or in a production environment.

Example

The following example shows an assemble with the AssemblyVersionAttribute attribute applied.

Imports System
Imports System.Reflection

<Assembly: AssemblyVersionAttribute("4.3.2.1")>
Namespace DesignLibrary
End Namespace

using System;
using System.Reflection;

[assembly: AssemblyVersionAttribute("4.3.2.1")]
namespace DesignLibrary {}

using namespace System;
using namespace System::Reflection;

[assembly: AssemblyVersionAttribute("4.3.2.1")];
namespace DesignLibrary {}

See Also

Tasks

How to: Create a Publisher Policy

Concepts

Assembly Versioning