What is the best way to use assembly versioning attributes?

Question

The AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attributes are the built-in way of handling version numbers for .NET assemblies. While the framework provides the ability to have the

Answer 1

The AssemblyVersionAttribute is part of an assembly's identity. Changing that means it is a different assembly and programs linking to that assembly need to be recompiled/linked or a version policy need to be applied. We didn't find that apealing so we choose to only increase the AssemblyFileVersion for each hotfix and only change the AssemblyVersion for each major release. We are aware that this decision brings back some of the win32 dll hell. We increase the AssemblyFileVersion for each build and label/tag the version control system with that version so we know from what source the binary came.