When you install .NET on your computer, some additional tools are installed in Windows to help you manage .NET and assemblies. You can find these tools navigating from the Start button. Go to:
Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Microsoft .NET 2.0 Configuration
You can use this tool to copy a component into the GAC or view the ones that are already there. The tool helpfully checks to see if you have given the component a strong name before allowing the copy. To demonstrate the tool, I assigned a strong name to a sample component using the default VB 2005 name, ClassLibrary1.DLL and copied it into the GAC using the .NET 2.0 configuration tool. (To add an assembly to the GAC, right-click on Assembly Cache in the tree display and select "Add ..." or click Help Topic under the view menu for a display of links with explanations.) Here's the GAC with the new component added:
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There's another trick that you can perform here. Earlier, I said that in .NET, the specific version of a component must be matched to make sure that incompatible versions are never used. If this was the only way it worked, then every version ever created would have to be saved to your hard drive and even in this age of cheap RAM, that might be too much. To solve this problem, .NET lets you decide when a specific version should be used for a range of requests and you can enter this information using the .NET 2.0 configuration tool too. Just select the particular component you want to be used and specify the range of versions that should use it. In the illustration linked below, version 1.0.0.0 is configured to handle all requests for versions between 1.0.0.0 to 9.9.9.9.
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The world of .NET and assemblies is very different from COM, but it's also much more direct and logical. Create a simple assembly of your own in VB 2005 and try out the tools. I think you'll discover that once you have gone through the steps a few times, it's not that hard after all!
