What is GAC in DotNet?

What are situations when you register .NET assembly in GAC ?

GAC (Global Assembly Cache) is used where shared .NET assembly reside. GAC is used in the following situations :-

• If the application has to be shared among several application.


• If the assembly has some special security requirements like only administrators can remove the assembly. If the assembly is private then a simple delete of assembly the assembly file will remove the assembly.

Note :- Registering .NET assembly in GAC can lead to the old problem of DLL hell, where COM version was stored in central registry. So GAC should be used when absolutely necessary.