.NET – Putting a base in the middle (Eric Lippert – Fabulous Adventures In Coding)
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/14
I always tend to recompile assemblies when something changes they depend upon.
But now I’m even more careful after reading Fabulous Adventures In Coding : Putting a base in the middle.
Especially his checklist is important.
When you use a newer version of an assembly you depend on:
(1) at the very least test your derived types with the new base type — your derived types are relying on the mechanisms of the base types; when a mechanism changes, you have to re-test the code which relies upon that mechanism.
(2) if there was a breaking change, recompile, re-test and re-ship the derived type. And
(3) you might be surprised by what is a breaking change; adding a new override can potentially be a breaking change in some rare cases.
–jeroen
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