.NET assemblies not strongly signed for 2.32.1 and 2.33

[Cody Mack]

The following versions of the .NET WebDriver assemblies are not strongly signed:

2.33.0
2.32.1

Why are these not signed? Could there be a release of 2.33 which is
signed? Assemblies which are strongly-signed and use Selenium cannot
upgrade to these versions.

[Jim Evans]

We've gone back and forth on strong-named assemblies a couple of times[1], most recently in 2.32.1, when the strong-names were explicitly removed from the build process[2]. Help me understand the use case where the assemblies that use WebDriver need to be signed. In other words, the code you're writing that uses WebDriver is apparently being strong-named in your build process, and I don't understand a reason for that.

Look, strong-naming an assembly breaks some things (like NuGet integration) in a pretty fundamental way. If using ILMerge to sign the assembly yourself after the fact won't get you where you need to be, I'd like to understand that.

--Jim

[1] http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=5610
[2] http://selenium.googlecode.com/git/dotnet/CHANGELOG

[Alex K]

The reason is very simple why I need test assembly to be signed. When I need to declare that testing assembly is a Friend(InternalsVisisbleTo) and testing assembly is signed I have no other choice. I need everything to be signed.

It is not clear to me why lot's of other nuget packages come with signed versions and this is a problem for you.Newtonsoft they have many versions and they still provide them.

[Jim Evans]

It's a problem because, frankly, in order to get signed assemblies to work with NuGet, one has to do weird, wacky, nonstandard things with version resources. James Newton-King pioneered the hacks to make this possible for Json.NET, and make no mistake, the techniques are hacks of the highest order. While he may be willing to do that with his library, I am not.

[Jim Evans]

Oh, and furthermore, strong-named versions of each release *are* available for download at the Selenium release site; they simply aren't packaged for distribution via NuGet. Additionally, you also always have the option of adding a strong-name as part of your own build process using ILMerge.