Rules for C# class backward compatibility/avoiding breaking changes

Question

I\'m working on a C# 3.5 assembly that is consumed by many different applications in an enterprise server environment. I would like to add some properties to an existing C# clas

Answer 1

You have to maintain the same assembly version (i.e. don't increment it across builds) — see the AssemblyVersionAttribute in MSDN.

Also, you could leverage assembly binding redirects, but that involves config file changes which I don't expect to be desirable in your case.