Downside of deploying a DLL that is part of GAC, on the bin folder?

Question

Is there any downside other than the increased package size, for deploying a DLL that is part of the GAC?

What should we be worried when we do this? I believe GAC DLLs win over local DLL, so worst case scenario, if the target machine does not have the DLL on GAC and the local DLL is for 64 bit but the target machine is 32 bit, I can see a problem. But in this case, deploying the DLL as local copy does not make it worse.

I am not suggesting to put everything on local copy. I am wondering if local copy approach is to be considered as "safer way".

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with it at all. You GAC DLLs will "win" over your local bin if they are the same version number and if they are the same version number there is no problem, a neither here nor there kind of thing. See this question on stack: Dll in both the bin and the gac, which one gets used?