Bending the world so log4net can work

log4net.

Firstly, why the Hell would you change the public key of a strongly named assembly between versions?

Secondly, WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU CHANGE THE PUBLIC KEY? Jesus.

Yes, I've read http://logging.apache.org/log4net/release/faq.html#two-snks and that just reeks of the development team having some kind of argument with people outside of their anointed circle of coders.

Anyway, there's a requirement on some old CMS code in a project I'm working on, and the DLLs have got a reference to log4net 1.2.10 while the rest of the world is staring down the barrel of 1.2.13.

Incidentally, I think it's really bad form to put numbers into assembly names, and, further, to have version 1.2.13 to be a completely different NuGet version (2.0.3). Seriously, what the fuck?

I found this post which really helped - you can reference two different versions if they use a strong name as long as you stick them in different folders, whilst keeping a reference in the project to the later one but setting Copy Local to false. I also added a pre-build event on the website which would make the folders if they didn't exist and copy the appropriate DLLs into each.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3158928/referencing-2-differents-versions-of-log4net-in-the-same-solution

However, the finishing touch was that since this was an endpoint - i.e. a website where lots of DLLs are bundled up together - then it needed to have the right path; in this case, it needed "bin\" prepended to it:

	<runtime>
	<assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
	<dependentAssembly>
	<assemblyIdentity name="log4net" publicKeyToken="1b44e1d426115821" culture="neutral" />
	<codeBase version="1.2.10.0" href="bin\log4net.1.2.10\log4net.dll" />
	</dependentAssembly>
	<dependentAssembly>
	<assemblyIdentity name="log4net" publicKeyToken="669e0ddf0bb1aa2a" culture="neutral" />
	<codeBase version="1.2.13.0" href="bin\log4net.1.2.13\log4net.dll" />
	</dependentAssembly>
	</assemblyBinding>
	</runtime>

view raw web.config hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Currently reading: