The book goes through the trouble of creating a digital signature for the application. Why do we need to do this? And is it necessary?

jaspe

No, it's not needed. You can comment out these lines in all of the AssemblyInfo files:

//[assembly: AssemblyDelaySign(false)]
//[assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(@"c:\thephile\Keys\ThePhile.snk")]
//[assembly: AssemblyKeyName("")]

It's only needed if you want to install an assembly in the GAC, and this isn't needed in ThePhile.

If you did want to use a strong key, you should make your own and not use the one provided.

Eric

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the info.

>> It's only needed if you want to install an assembly in the GAC, and this isn't needed in ThePhile.

Question about the above, I don't know what a "GAC" is and why i would install an assembly for it! :) What exactly is it? Thanks again!

Jaspe

The GAC is the Global Assembly Cache. It's a place to put assemblies that can be shared by other applications.

It's not actually one folder, but it's rather a complex group of folders. MS provided us with a Windows Explorer plug-in that lets us view the GAC by looking at C:\Windows\Assembly in Explorer.

The GAC is always searched first when the .NET runtime tries to locate an assembly. This makes it a great place to locate COM+ and remoted assemblies because a caller from another computer will always be able to launch them if there're in the GAC.

This isn't needed by ThePhile because the assemblies are deployed locally in the bin subdirectory.

Eric