Unable to uninstall the assembly from GAC which is being used by another application

[santoshaher]

I have encountered an issue while upgrading an application from .Net Framework 3.5 to latest version with .NET Framework 4.5.1. I came into a situation, where one application is using a logger assembly built with .NET framework 3.5, another application(built on 4.5.1) tries to uninstall same logger assembly which is being used by previous application, but it couldn?t proceed. As it keeps on searching the logger assembly in 4.0 GAC and takes significantly lot more time.


However above scenario works smoothly where older and newer applications are built on .NET Framework 3.5 only.


Note: Assembly is getting uninstalled by windows installer not by GACUTIL utility.

 

[jmcilhinney]

Tell the user that they have to uninstall the old application first. Either that or you're going to have to use a tool to create the installer that can give you that level of control.

 

[santoshaher]

Thank you for the reply.
Yes while upgrading same thing is gonna happen, but 4.5.1 installer is unable to uninstall 3.5 assembly as its being used by another application.
and above scenario works perfectly if assembly is being used by another application and the installer is of 3.5.