Where is gacutil.exe ?

As we write walkthrough's on how to do various things with Web Deploy or other tools, we often say to try this or that with gacutil.exe but I always forget where the tool lives.  Since I re-image test machines all the time with various things installed, I forget this stuff (perhaps I'm the only one).

It's included with Visual Studio (as part of the Microsoft SDK) and the .Net framework (v1 and 1.1 only!)  So it might be in one of the following (or more!):

  • %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Bin\gacutil.exe
  • %programfiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin
  • %programfiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin
  • %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705
  • %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322

So either you'll need to download this from the old .net frameworks, or you can install it as part of VS.  (Haven't checked if it comes with the Express editions.) 

Since none of these places are probably on your path, you'll need to either update your path (temporarily or permanently), or just run gacutil.exe from wherever you find it.

Hope that helps!

BTW, here is the command-line reference:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex0ss12c(VS.80).aspx 

2 Comments

  • You're right. It was only included in the V1 and V1.1 framework releases; now it's only included in Visual Studio releases as part of the Microsoft SDK sub-component. (I updated the blog with those details)

  • Also when installing Visual Studio 2008 Express SP1 gacutil gets installed in directory %programfiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin

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