WinForms use of AssemblyInformationalVersion Attribute

The AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute provides a secondary mechanism for versioning an assembly without modifying the value of the AssemblyVersion attribute, thus consumers of an assembly do not need to apply binding redirects or publisher policy when revisions of an assembly are deployed.

Contrary to the documentation:

The attribute defined by this class attaches additional version information to an assembly for documentation purposes only. This data is never used at runtime.

this attribute is referenced by the System.Windows.Forms.Application.ProductVersion static property, which in turn is referenced by the Application.CommonAppDataPath, Application.LocalUserAppDataPath and Application.UserAppDataPath static properties. This is the case for the  .NET 1.* and .NET 2.0 class libraries.

If the AssemblyInformationalVersion attribute is applied to the base executable, the ProductVersion property and its dependent properties will use this value instead of the AssemblyVersion attribute value.

Microsoft states that this behaviour is by design.

Comment Notification

If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS