I owe Richard Grimes lunch. Heck, dinner even. He has posted a fantastic self-paced workshop that delves into the details of the .NET Assembly Loader (Fusion).

Location of .NET assemblies and how to change the default locations

• Using .NET tools to resolve problems with assembly locations and how to fix broken applications
• Sharing assemblies with the GAC, updating GAC dependencies with publisher policy files, GAC references
• Dynamic loading of assemblies, partial named assemblies

I'm in awe of the effort that has been put into this. It's a better reference than MSDN when it comes to these details. It's all incredibly well organized, linear as appropriate, and easy to read. Assembly loading is a difficult issue, and I've never seen such a fine reference.

Thanks Richard!