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When puslishing a website from Visual studio 2008, you get a dialog box with some options. One of them is 'Use fixed naming and single page assemblies'.

We don't have that enabled, but what are the pro's and con's of this option? Is there a difference in performance or anything? Should or should we not use this?

Without this option, we get 774 files in the bin folder after publishing, when we check it, we get 1320 files, because every ascx gets its own dll.

If we do check this, are the 'fixed names' only fixed on my computer? Or is it the same when a colleague publishes the website?

Erik Dekker
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1 Answers1

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Fixed named assemblies provide flexiblity in page level updates. Since each page will have its own named assembly (instead of a random name) it is easy to update the application by just updating the required assembly. Disadvantage is the large number of assemblies (difficult to maintain) and also slight performance hit would be there.

For more details check this article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229863(VS.80).aspx

Source of answer: http://forums.asp.net/t/1057767.aspx

From the MSDN article:

Fixed Assembly Names Some scenarios, such as deploying a Web application using the MSI Windows Installer, require the use of consistent file names and contents, as well as consistent directory structures to identify assemblies or configuration settings for updates. In those cases, you can use the -fixednames option to specify that the ASP.NET Compilation tool should compile an assembly for each source file instead of using the where multiple pages are compiled into assemblies. This can lead to a large number of assemblies, so if you are concerned with scalability you should use this option with caution.

Kees C. Bakker
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  • What is 'slight performance hit'? is it noticeable? and i still don't know if a colleague can also do the update of a single page, or do i always have to publish from the same machine ? – Erik Dekker Apr 15 '11 at 10:32
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    Depends on your application / situation. Less dll's is less flexibility / more dll's is performance hit, because more needs to be loaded. In Dutch we say 'meten is weten'... measuring is knowing. You'll need to look to what is acceptable in your situation. – Kees C. Bakker Apr 15 '11 at 10:34