Assembly Linker

Assembly Linker is useful if you want to create an assembly consisting of modules built from different compilers (if your compiler doesn’t support the equivalent of C#’s /addmodule switch) or perhaps if you just don’t know your assembly packaging requirements at build time. You can also use AL.exe to build resource-only assemblies, called satellite assemblies, which are typically used for localization purposes. This utility can produce an EXE or a DLL PE file that contains only a manifest describing the types in other modules. Letz see an illustration.

al /out:FullName.dll /t:library FirstName.netmodule LastName.netmodule

In this example, two separate modules, FirstName.netmodule and LastName.netmodule, are created. Neither module is an assembly because they don’t contain manifest metadata tables. Then a third file is produced: FullName.dll, which is a small DLL PE file (because of the /t[arget]:library switch) that contains no IL code but has manifest metadata tables indicating that FirstName.netmodule and LastName.netmodule are part of the assembly. The resulting assembly consists of three files: FullName.dll, FirstName.netmodule and LastName.netmodule.

Happy New Year 2011 with happy learning.