What is a strong name?
A strong name is a .NET assembly name combined with its version number and other information to uniquely identify the assembly. This allows multiple versions of the same assembly to peacefully co-exist in the global assembly cache, where shared assemblies are typically stored. A strong name consists of five parts: • Simple Name – Usually the name of the file (without the extension) that contains the assembly • Public Key – RSA cryptographic public key that helps verify the assembly’s authenticity • Version – Four-part version number, in the form of Major.Minor.Build.Revision • Culture – Target audience for the assembly, such as “neutral” (default audience), “en-us” (English – United States) or “fr” (France) etc. • Processor Architecture – Defines the assembly’s format, such as MSIL (intermediate language) or x86 (binary for Intel x86 processors) An example strong name is “Mini-Launcher, Version=0.3.612.24542, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=ffa52ed9739048b4, ProcessorArchitecture=MSIL”
