Structure of assemblies

Assembly may be single file or composition of several files.



Manifest:  Manifest contains information about the modules in assembly and references to other assemblies.

In single file assemblies there is only one physical file that contains all four pieces of information.

The composite file assembly is a logical unit in which only one file contains manifest and that manifest contains the reference to other files and its regular information. These other files contain MSIL code for different module along with its type metadata.

Type metadata: Type metadata provides information about the code. It provides the description of members (classes, properties, methods, etc) present within the code of assembly along with the data types for their parameters and return values.

MSIL code: MSIL is the machine independent instruction set into which .net framework programs are compiled. MSIL includes instructions for loading, storing, initializing and calling methods on objects, as well as instructions arithmetic and logical operations, control flow, direct memory access, exception handling and other operations.

Resources: Non-executable part or files required in the code such as image, icons or files.