25 February 2006
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.