Installing RemObjects.Hydra.dll into GAC

Hydra
1

Hi.
We’re attempting to install our delivery files and dependencies into the GAC.
After strong naming in the build pipeline they all seem to be working when installed into the GAC apart from RemObjects.Hydra.dll which fails if it is not present in the plugin folder (The primary .dll which is loaded by LoadManagedModule remains in the plugin folder).

After some digging it appears that when the INNO installation installs RemObjects.Hydra.dll into the GAC it actually ends up in

C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL
rather than
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL

Which I think is the pre Framework 4 location ?

2

Hello

Yes, RemObjects.Hydra.dll is a .NET 3.5 assembly (backwards compatibility reasons), so it will end up in .NET 2.0 GAC. Please note that only .NET version used by the plugin itself is important. For .NET 4+ plugin the Hydra code will run in .NET 4+ environment as well.

So your .NET 4+ plugin won’t be able to load it from GAC, as .NET 4 and .NET 2 have separate GAC storages.
To make things even worse, InnoSetup does not provide built-in option to select the GAC it should put the assembly into.
There are several options:

  1. To write own GacUtil tool using API exposed by Fusion.dll
  2. To call GacUtil shipped with .NET. Not that easy as you’d have to determine path to this tool first
  3. We can create a personal Hydra build for you where Hydra will be built for both .NET Framework 3.5 and .NET Framework 4.5. Once you’ll confirm that GAC’in .NET 4.5 assemblies resolves your issue we’ll merge this personal build into the main Hydra builds

Which of these options look best for you?

3

Thank you for your reply.
A hydra build targeting 4.5 seems the best approach.

Regards
Martin.

4

Please drop a mail to support@ with your account name (one you use for Hydra licenses). Once the build is available we’ll put it into personal downloads of this account.