I am working on a large web application implemented in ASP.net. The main part of application, much of it implemented by a 3rd party, is managed by others so I don’t have much control over it.
I have implemented 8 ASP.net custom controls which compile to separate DLLs and are put into the application’s bin folder. These controls have to link to a couple of DLLs (or should that be assemblies?) from the main application which are also stored in the bin folder. Let’s call them MainAppCore1.dll and MainAppCore2.dll. These seem to be managed .NET code.
My problem is that the main application has been updated, and worse looks like regularly being updated in the near future, due to to bugs problems I have compiled all my controls against the original version of the main app dlls, so now they won’t load. Obviously I can solve the issue by recompiling all the controls against the new versions of MainAppCore1.dll and MainAppCore2.dll but am looking for a smarter way
My question is: is it possible to keep 2 versions of the main app dlls in the bin folder so that my controls will keep working (probably) each time the main app is upgraded?
I don’t want to have to edit the web.config file by the way as this would be politically complicated.
Shortly and Simply, you cannot . Broadly speaking having two versions of .net assemblies in a single folder is only possible in GAC(Global Assembly Cache) folder which is a special folder, where multiple versions of .Net assemblies can run and your control assemblies can point to specific version in GAC, regardless of how many versions exist in there. One possible solution is to ask your 3rd party vendors to strongly name their MainCore1.dll and install it in GAC, every time the version changes, and then in your web.config you can point to a particular version.