You are creating a corporate WPF application that uses Entity Framework. You deploy Entity Framework entities and object context to an assembly named Contoso.Data.dll. The application installs this assembly to the GAC and is shared by other applications. You need be able to do the following:

* Version the shared assembly independently of the application.
* Deploy the shared assembly with your application.
* Ensure that the assembly cannot be uninstalled if another installed application needs it.

What should you do?

As a general rule, any component that is shared by more than one application (or has the potential to be shared) should be put into its own merge module. Although it is possible to put multiple components into a single merge module, it is best to create a merge module for each component in order to avoid distributing unnecessary files.

A merge module is like a snapshot of a particular version of a component. A new merge module should be created for each successive version of a component in order to avoid version conflicts.