What is IL Code, Assembly Manifest file, ILDASM tool and ILASM tool and Difference between them in Microsoft Dot Net Framework

IL stands for Intermediate Language
ILDASM stands for Intermediate Language Disassembler.
ILASM stands for Intermediate Language Assembler

IL Code
Whenever we are creating a console application - then exe will be generated, if class library project then a dll will be generated. Irrespective of the application an assembly contains MSIL code and Manifest.

The code we write in English is called as High Level Language and when we compile it the Intermediate Language code will be generated, If we want to see the IL code then we need to use the tool ILDASM.

Assembly Manifest file
Assembly Manifest File contains meta data (information about information) about the assembly,
like
i) Name of the Assembly
ii) Version of the assembly (Major version, minor version, revision version, Build Number)
iii) Dependencies of other Assembly in the current assembly

Manifest Files are important in an Assembly because during runtime i.e. while executing all the depending assemblies and its correct version has to be loaded and this information is obtained from Manifest file itself.

ILDASM tool is a tool to parses any .NET Framework .exe or .dll assembly, and shows the IL information and Manifest information of an assembly.

ILASM tool - ILASM tool is used to reconstruct an assembly from a text file that contains manifest and IL.


Further Reading – 

1) ILASM and ILDAM (MSDN Links)

2) Assembly Manifest
Also Check Out -


1) Global Assembly Cache (GAC) in .NET

2) How to add an Assembly automatically into GAC using Post Build Events in Visual Studio

3) How to Get the Private Key of a .NET assembly present in GAC

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