Advantages of using netmodules in .NET

I often wondered what was the advantage of compiling files into .net modules and linking them together using the Al.exe tool. I also noticed that al.exe actually only creates a stub dll, the netmodule files really have to be physically deployed too.

I guess the advantage of compiling to netmodules are:

• Each module may be independently developed by a separate set of developers.
• Each module may be written in any .net language.
• A multimodule assembly does have memory advantages: if you put rarely-usedtypes in one module, that module will only be loaded when one of its types is referenced, when the type is first used. If the rarely-used types are never used in an execution of the assembly, the module is not loaded.