Avoid assembly reference problems generally

Question

I've searched a lot but wasn't able to find a solution yet.

We have a lot of programs for our clients with shared libs (dlls) in one directory. But if one lib gets an update we have to recompile all programs which are refering the dll. If we don't, our client get's an error when calling a function from the lib (The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference).

We would like to reference a lib as usual and when a lib get's upgraded the programs should just use the new version instead of throwing an error.

Part of the problem is, that the reference is internally fixed with an version-number. My first idea is to remove the version number of the dll before refering. But is that even possible?

I would be grateful for any (other) ideas or suggestions how to bypass the reference problem. This may be a duplicate but I didn't yet find a post with an solution - just post's which describe the reasons.

Answer 1

What about assembly binding redirection - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/433ysdt1(v=vs.110).aspx (one more msdn link) ?

You can specify in the config redirection to a new version, so it wont require recompile. But if signature of classes\methods that you are using will be changed - then it will throw an exception anyway.

ASP.Net MVC uses this approach to specify redirection to a new version of MVC:

<runtime>
    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
        <dependentAssembly>
            <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Mvc" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
            <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-2.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" />
        </dependentAssembly>
        <dependentAssembly>
            <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" culture="neutral" />
            <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.5.0.0" newVersion="4.5.0.0" />
        </dependentAssembly>
    </assemblyBinding>
</runtime>