Deploy .Net Assembly in different folder

By default, the CLR will look for the assembly files(dll) in the same directory as the application(exe). If it cannot find the dll, a FileNotFound exception will be throw.

This might not be desirable if your application has a large number of dll that it reference. For example, if your application support plug-ins, you might want all the plug-ins to be put into another directory call 'plugin'.

There is 2 ways to deploy the dll into a different directory. However, this folder is relative to your application directory. You cannot deploy the dll outside your application directory.

Method 1
You can deploy the dll in a sub directory that has the same name as the dll.
For example:

You have 2 files, myapp.exe and mydll.dll. You deploy myapp.exe in your application folder, and deploy mydll.dll in a sub directory named 'mydll'.

It should look something like this :

\program files\MyGreatesApp\myapp.exe
\program files\MyGreatesApp\mydll\mydll.dll


Method 2
You can use a application configuration file to specify the private path the CLR
should search for to locate the dll.

For example, you place you exe and dll in the following directory :

\program files\MyGreatesApp\myapp.exe
\program files\MyGreatesApp\plugin\myplugin.dll

This is how your application configuration file should look like :

<configuration>
<runtime>
<assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
<probing privatePath="plugin"/>
</assemblyBinding>
</runtime>
</configuration>

If you have multiple directory, you can specify the all the directories using a semicolon delimited string. But take note that it cannot have any space in between the semicolon.

Example :

<probing privatePath="plugin;library"/>