Configuration for binding software assemblies to application programs

• US 20050166196A1
• Filed: 03/21/2005
• Published: 07/28/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/24/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Parthasarathy, Srivatsan, D'Souza, David, Shi, Alan, Shenoy, Sanjay G., FitzSimons, RoseMarie, Grier, Michael J., Dunn, Micheal
• Granted Patent: US 7,073,170 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/162
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/54 Link editing before load time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44536 Selecting among different versions

Abstract

A method, system and infrastructure that allow an application to run with specified versions of assemblies bound thereto, while allowing the application author, assembly publisher and/or an administrator to change the originally-specified version as desired. Each assembly may exist and run side-by-side on the system with other versions of the same assembly being used by other applications. An application manifest specifies any desired assembly versions, which may be redirected to another version (overridden) by an application configuration. A publisher configuration provided by an assembly publisher can similarly override the specified version. Lastly, an administrator configuration is capable of overriding other configuration versioning information. A table built from the manifest and any configuration redirection may be accessed during execution to quickly locate the appropriate version. The various configuration data structures themselves may be wrapped as assemblies, thereby enabling versioning of configurations.

Claims

1. A system in a computing environment, comprising:

a manifest including information that specifies a dependency of executable code on an identified version of a shared assembly;

a configuration corresponding to the shared assembly including information that redirects at least one version of a shared assembly to another version of that shared assembly; and

a binding mechanism configured to receive a request directed to execute the executable code, to select the identified version of the shared assembly from the manifest, and to interpret the configuration to determine whether to redirect the identified version in the manifest to another version identified in the configuration.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising an activation context configured to maintain assembly version mapping information, wherein the binding mechanism saves assembly version information to the activation context.

3. The system of claim 2 further comprising a version matching mechanism configured to access the activation context to relate a version independent request from the executable code to a version specific assembly.

4. The system of claim 2 wherein the activation context is storable to a non-volatile storage.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the executable code comprises an application program in the form of a file maintained in an application folder, and wherein the manifest comprises another file maintained in the application folder.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the configuration includes an application configuration file maintained in the application folder.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the configuration further includes a publisher configuration file maintained in an assembly cache with at least one version of the assembly.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the configuration further includes an administrator configuration.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the configuration includes at least one of an application configuration data structure, a publisher configuration data structure and an administrator configuration data structure.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the configuration includes configuration version data associated therewith.

11. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable modules configured to implement the system of claim 1.

12. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving a request corresponding to binding a selected version of an assembly to an application program;

determining whether publisher configuration information is associated with the assembly, and if so, interpreting information in the publisher configuration to determine whether to bind to the application program a version of the assembly that is different from the selected version, and if so, selecting that different version as the selected version of the assembly for binding to the application program; and

determining whether application configuration information is associated with the application, and if so, interpreting the application configuration information to determine whether to bind to the application program a version of the assembly that is different from the selected version, and if so, selecting that different version as the selected version of the assembly for binding to the application program.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising, returning information corresponding to the selected version of the assembly in response to the request.

14. The method of claim 12 further comprising, loading the selected version of the assembly in response to the request.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the selected version is loaded from a folder containing the application program.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the assembly is a shared assembly maintained in an assembly cache, and wherein the selected version is loaded from the assembly cache.

17. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving a request corresponding to binding a selected version of an assembly to an application program;

determining whether application configuration information is associated with the application, and if so, interpreting the application configuration information to determine whether to bind to the application program a version of the assembly that is different from the selected version, and if so, selecting that different version as the selected version of the assembly for binding to the application program;

determining whether publisher configuration information is associated with the assembly, and if so, interpreting information in the publisher configuration to determine whether to bind to the application program a version of the assembly that is different from the selected version, and if so, selecting that different version as the selected version of the assembly for binding to the application program; and

determining whether administrator configuration information exists, and if so, interpreting administrator configuration information to determine whether to bind to the application program a version of the assembly that is different from the selected version, and if so, selecting that different version as the selected version of the assembly for binding to the application program.

18. The method of claim 17 further comprising, returning information corresponding to the selected version of the assembly in response to the request.

19. The method of claim 17 further comprising, loading the selected version of the assembly in response to the request.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein the selected version is loaded from a folder containing the application program.