How to reference Assemblies in the GAC

If you install assemblies in the GAC and then wonder why you don't see them enumerated in the Add Reference dialogs, or, if you are complaining that if you browse the assembly folder in the Windows directory, you can't see the assembly in order to add a reference to it, read on.

The Add Reference dialog box is path-based and does not enumerate the components from the GAC. The assembly folder under windows is a special folder view and so you cannot browse to an assembly from this folder and expect to be able to Add a reference to it in the normal way.

If you want to use an assembly from the GAC, you should drop your assemblies into a local folder, and then add a reference to the assembly from this folder. You may want to set the "Copy Local" property to False for that assembly if you do not want the assembly to be copied locally to your project folders. At runtime, the application will automatically use the assembly from the GAC.

How to make your custom assemblies appear in the Add Reference dialog:

To display your assembly in the Add Reference dialog box, you can add a registry key, such as the following, which points to the location of the assembly

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\MyAssemblies]@="C:\\MyAssemblies" 
-- where "MyAssemblies" is the name of the folder in which the assemblies reside. 

NOTE: You can create the this registry entry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive. This will change the setting for all of the users on the system. If you create this registry entry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, this entry will affect the setting for only the current user.

For more information about assemblies and the GAC, vist the following MSDN Web Page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconglobalassemblycache.asp

GrantAccess Message

Grants a security principal (user or team) access to the specified entity instance.

Remarks

To use this message, pass an instance of the GrantAccessRequest class as the request parameter in the Execute method.

This action applies to all child instances of the target entity instance. For all child instances, if the caller does not have share privileges for those entity types, or share rights to the instances, the child instances are not shared. As a result, the owner of the instance, or a user who shares the instance with share rights, automatically has share rights to all child instances of the target entity instance. In this case, only the lack of privileges for a particular entity type prevents the child instances from being shared.

See Cascading Rules for a description of how actions on a parent instance affect child instances.

To perform this action, the caller must have access rights on the entity instance specified in the request class. For a list of required privileges, see GrantAccess Privileges.

  
//# The following code example shows how to use the GrantAccess message.
// Set up the CRM service.
CrmAuthenticationToken token = new CrmAuthenticationToken();
// You can use enums.cs from the SDK\Helpers folder to get the enumeration for Active Directory authentication.
token.AuthenticationType = 0; 
token.OrganizationName = "AdventureWorksCycle";
 
CrmService service = new CrmService();
service.Url = "http://:/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx";
service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = token;
service.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

// Create the SecurityPrincipal Object
SecurityPrincipal principal = new SecurityPrincipal();
principal.Type = SecurityPrincipalType.User;

// PrincipalId is the Guid of the user to whom access is being granted
principal.PrincipalId = new Guid("7B222F98-F48A-4AED-9D09-77A19CB6EE82");

// Create the PrincipalAccess Object
PrincipalAccess principalAccess = new PrincipalAccess();

// Set the PrincipalAccess Object's Properties
principalAccess.Principal = principal;

// Gives the principal access to read
principalAccess.AccessMask = AccessRights.ReadAccess;

// Create the Target Object for the Request
TargetOwnedAccount target = new TargetOwnedAccount();

// EntityId is the Guid of the account access is being granted to
target.EntityId = new Guid("6A92D3AE-A9C9-4E44-9FA6-F3D5643753C1");

// Create the Request Object
GrantAccessRequest grant = new GrantAccessRequest();

// Set the Request Object's properties
grant.PrincipalAccess = principalAccess;
grant.Target = target;

// Execute the Request
GrantAccessResponse granted = (GrantAccessResponse)service.Execute(grant);