How to prevent resource assembly generation for embedded resources

Question

I have a project which embeds some files into it, two of which ends with .SMS.something. When the project is compiled, a satellite assembly for the "SMS" culture is generated even though I have not specified anywhere that I want to use satellite assemblies, and is it even a culture?

I have searched all over the place for an explanation, but I am at a loss. The only things I found were people trying to embed their resource assemblies for actual cultures into their executable, but this is not my case. I just want to have all my embedded resources, which are only in one language, to be in the same assembly.

How can I prevent this automatic generation of satellite assemblies, or specify that SMS is not a culture?

Answer 1

I managed to solve this in a very hacky put perfectly working way by looking in the Microsoft.Common.targets and Microsoft.CSharp.targets and figuring out what tasks actually sorted the resources and gave them names.

So I override the CreateCSharpManifestResourceName task with one that set the ManifestResourceName and LogicalName to be something along the lines of what i want:

<!-- Overriding this task in order to set ManifestResourceName and LogicalName -->
<UsingTask TaskName="CreateCSharpManifestResourceName" TaskFactory="CodeTaskFactory"
           AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0.dll">
  <ParameterGroup>
    <ResourceFiles ParameterType="Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem[]"
                   Required="true" />
    <RootNamespace ParameterType="System.String"
                   Required="true" />
    <PrependCultureAsDirectory
                   ParameterType="System.Boolean" />
    <ResourceFilesWithManifestResourceNames
                   ParameterType="Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem[]"
                   Output="true" />
  </ParameterGroup>
  <Task>
    <Code Type="Fragment" Language="cs">
      foreach (ITaskItem item in ResourceFiles) {
        var link = item.GetMetadata("Link").Replace("\\", "/");
        link = "/" + link.TrimStart('/');
        item.SetMetadata("ManifestResourceName", link);
        item.SetMetadata("LogicalName", link);
      }
      ResourceFilesWithManifestResourceNames = ResourceFiles;
    </Code>
  </Task>
</UsingTask>

As an added bonus, the files i embed get their actual path (only with \ replaced with /) as their resource name, and thus can be easily looked up using Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(x) where x would be e.g. /path.to/my.SMS.file.

And then I override the AssignCulture task with one that just returns that none of the files had any culture, and adds <WithCulture>false</WithCulture> to them (which fits perfectly in my case):

<!-- Overriding this task to set WithCulture and sort them as not having culture -->
<UsingTask TaskName="AssignCulture" TaskFactory="CodeTaskFactory"
           AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0.dll">
  <ParameterGroup>
    <Files ParameterType="Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem[]"
           Required="true" />
    <AssignedFilesWithCulture
           ParameterType="Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem[]"
           Output="true" />
    <AssignedFilesWithNoCulture
           ParameterType="Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem[]"
           Output="true" />
    </ParameterGroup>
    <Task>
        <Code Type="Fragment" Language="cs">
            ITaskItem[] withCulture = new ITaskItem[Files.Length];
            ITaskItem[] withoutCulture = new ITaskItem[Files.Length];
            for (var i = 0; i &lt; Files.Length; i++) {
                ITaskItem item = Files[i];
                var wc = item.GetMetadata("WithCulture");
                if (wc == "") { item.SetMetadata("WithCulture", "False"); }
                if (wc.ToLowerInvariant() == "true") {
                    withCulture[i] = item;
                } else {
                    withoutCulture[i] = item;
                }
                var type = item.GetMetadata("Type");
                if (type == "") { item.SetMetadata("Type", "Non-Resx"); }
            }
            AssignedFilesWithCulture = withCulture;
            AssignedFilesWithNoCulture = withoutCulture;
        </Code>
    </Task>
</UsingTask>