Compiling .NET code often results in multiple assembly files being created, including satellite DLLs, all of which are required for the program to run. While this is a non-issue during development, when it comes to deployment it often means an unwanted stage of users having to unzip files, or additional steps in the installer as DLLs are moved to specific places.
You can dramatically simplify your deployment process by using SmartAssembly to merge and embed the code from referenced DLLs into your main assembly
Dependency Merging
- Deploy your .NET application in one file
- Improve the performance and protection of your software
Dependency merging takes all the DLLs and merges dependencies into the main assembly so you don't have to load lots of DLL files. When a dependency is merged, it becomes a part of the main assembly and the code from a merged dependency can therefore be obfuscated and pruned as well as code from the main assembly.
Dependencies Compression & Embedding
- Facilitate your software deployment and maintenance
- Reduce the size of your program
Dependencies compression and embedding allows referenced DLLs to be embedded into the main assembly as resources, instead of being merged into the main assembly's contents. This feature also compresses these resources and dynamically uncompresses them at runtime.
You can control SmartAssembly's dependency merging and dependencies compression and embedding through the command line, so it is easily integrated into the build process, providing simple, reliable merging of dependencies on every build.