Custom Assembly Path
In a previous post, I mentioned that my ASP.NET Session Variables were getting lost. This was due to the fact that I was deploying 'plugin' assemblies in my bin folder. Because I was altering the bin folder, my web application had to silently restart. Not nice.
One solution to this would be to use a different state management system. SQLServer or StateServer will work fine. However, these methods are not as fast as InProc.
Another solution (in my case), is to specify an alternate bin folder. In other words, I need to tell the CLR to look for assemblies in the normal bin folder, but also in another folder for my 'addin' assemblies. This is done by adding the following section to web.config...
<configuration>
<runtime>
<assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
<probing privatePath="AddinBin" />
</assemblyBinding>
</runtime>
</configuration>
The <probing> element tells the CLR to look for assemblies in the “AddinBin” folder.