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I've seen discussions of techniques to merging multiple assemblies into one (e.g. ilmerge). I am scratching my head on why does one want to do so. Is there any reason other than the obvious "one file is easier to deploy/track/maintain/reference"?

NS.X.
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    There's a few good reasons why in this related post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9376/ilmerge-best-practices – Mightymuke Nov 03 '12 at 01:56
  • ILMerge is a programmer's tool. Creating an installer so everything is merged into setup.exe is usually regarded as a mysterious black art invoked by somebody else. – Hans Passant Jan 10 '13 at 21:50

2 Answers2

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Some reasons may be:

  • Small utility programs, for example when you want to just copy/paste the whole program to a server without any folders or anything.
  • Deployment scenarios where you want to keep minimal amount of files that should be copied, uploaded to FTP etc, for example installers.
  • NuGet packages where you want to keep the amount of added references to a minimum.
Christian Fredh
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There is a faster startup time associated with decreased I/O on an application's Cold Startup. Best way to see how much improvement time can be saved is to measure as each app is different: number of assemblies, size of assemblies, etc.

Dave Black
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