make use of the snk file

Question

Whatever I download, source code, eg NHibernate, or .dll file, eg NHibernate.Caches.SysCache, there are the .snk file.

What does this mean?

For source code, I just delete the snk file and compile them directly, it works. But is there anything I do wrong? I don't use the snk file.

For dll file, I found problem on version.

Answer 1

Assemblies can be assigned a cryptographic signature called a strong name, which provides name uniqueness for the assembly and prevents someone from taking over the name of your assembly (name spoofing). If you are deploying an assembly that will be shared among many applications on the same computer, it must have a strong name.(msdn)

With snk file included in a project, you can able to generate PublicToken for your dll.