Portable GAC Manager

Portable GAC Manager is a lightweight utility that provides a quick way to access the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), a type of store available on all machines that has the role of holding assemblies that need to be shared by several apps. Using GAC to share assemblies between apps comes with a few advantages, including deploying bug fixes, an increased CLR performance when the assembly is the first place to be queries and a strong name signature verification. On the other hand, GAC makes it harder to install and uninstall assemblies.

Users who had the curiosity to search for it via Explorer, may have stumbled across something that looks like a regular directory tree, but in reality it is not. When accessed from DOS for instance, GAC contains a lot more directories and subdirectories for each single assembly file. The reason for this is that it was not designed to be accessed or viewed like this, but rather with the Fusion shell.

Here comes the manager tool that enables users to view all contents of GAC along with various details that would make them easier to identify. Within the basic interface, users can easily search for assemblies based on names, versions, public key tokens or processor architecture, just to name a few.