I just want to cross-reference another post from the forum that was helpful for customers - hopefully it will be useful for you guys as well:

http://forums.infragistics.com/forums/t/9974.aspx

And want to add that while I dislike GAC, it does have its uses - e.g. if you host multiple sites on the same server, it is easier to maintain your assemblies if they are located in GAC as opposed to maintained in each individual /bin folder (this is still arguable though, since upgrading in GAC affects all sites and you will have to be super-sure you want to do that, so that you do not break all sites at once... but still... in some cases this might be want you want to do).

Hope this helps. 

Well, I'd say, it really is a matter of preference.

For me, on my development machine, I would install in GAC since I have admin rights. Plus, the design time assemblies do need be in the GAC, so if you want to have great design time experience, this is the better option. This btw is what the NetAdvantage installer does by default.

For production servers, you do not need the design time assemblies and you usually do not have the permissions to install in GAC (especially on shared hosting). So in this case,  I would recommend using the /bin folder and placing your assemblies there.

If you want to have an easy deployment process, you can choose the "Copy Local" option for your references in your project - this way, you can just XCopy your site to production and it will work fine.

@Hammer0815: I also do not like the GAC and I would also prefer what you suggest, but in this case I believe the problem is elsewhere. You can have multiple versions of our products in GAC, however you need to remove any extra references you have for them while upgrading. These are typically added silently by Visual Studio in your web.config file, so if you upgrade from, say, 6.1 to 8.1, just make sure you do a mass search for all 6.1 strings in your solution (all files) and remove any references to them (typically web.config only will do).

We are thinking on ways to make deployment easier for you guys, for example the new Aikido products will only have one assembly (no shared assembly), but it will take time.

Hope this helps! 

Ok. I found my mistake. Never install two different versions on the same server. in the result never install infragistics on your server. only work with local copies, cos every upgrade is horrible!!!

Maybe i´m wrong, but that´s my experience.

Hi, 

Never use GAC. If you run serveral different Websites and want to upgrade from v6.1 to v8.1. It´s horrible: you have to change all your websites at all. Otherwise the following disaster occured without exclusion:

Error 1 The type 'Infragistics.WebUI.UltraWebGrid.UltraWebGrid' exists in both 'c:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Infragistics2.WebUI.UltraWebGrid.v8.1\8.1.20081.1000__7dd5c3163f2cd0cb\Infragistics2.WebUI.UltraWebGrid.v8.1.dll' and 'c:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Infragistics2.WebUI.UltraWebGrid.v6.1\6.1.20061.1030__7dd5c3163f2cd0cb\Infragistics2.WebUI.UltraWebGrid.v6.1.dll' c:\inetpub\wwwroot\... 77 

the website does not know which assembly to choose. What a nice feature. Never use GAC