title: Version number in manifest file's dependentAssembly/assemblyIdentity element
body: <p>I'm working with an application that includes an un-managed client DLL and a managed COM server DLL (which was a challenge in itself: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33926756/managed-reg-free-com-server-wont-activate">Managed Reg-Free COM Server Won&#39;t Activate</a>), and now I'm wondering what is the best way to keep the version numbers in sync. Since we are building both the client and the server, and we try to keep the version numbers of all our files in sync for every build, it looks like I need to have a process that edits all my manifest files on both the client and server ends of all my isolated COM references before a full build happens. Is there an easier way?</p>
  
  <p>Example (client manifest):</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-xml prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?&gt;
  &lt;assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"&gt;
     &lt;assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="globals" version="1.0.0.0" /&gt;
     &lt;dependency&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
           &lt;assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="SoftBrands.FourthShift.FSCulture" version="8.0.0.999" publicKeyToken="541b4aff0f04b60a" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
     &lt;/dependency&gt;
  &lt;/assembly&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Server Manifest:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-xml prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;
  &lt;asmv1:assembly manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"&gt;
    &lt;assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="SoftBrands.FourthShift.FSCulture" version="8.0.0.999" publicKeyToken="541b4aff0f04b60a" /&gt;
     &lt;clrClass   clsid="{23D4FF3D-EEDF-4F68-AD65-749958EE3B2A}"
                 name="SoftBrands.FourthShift.FSCulture.FSCulture"
                 tlbid="{8D480B22-D603-309F-9A26-EA9E9B020207}"&gt;
     &lt;/clrClass&gt;
  &lt;/asmv1:assembly&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I could just do a global search and replace on <code>version="8.0.0.999"</code> with the current version for every build, but I suspect there might be a better way.</p>