Strong Named satellite assemblies using ResGen & AL with multiple resx / resources files

For whatever reason, when compiling multiple .resources files into a single satellite assembly (.dll) the resources will not show. Compiling a single resource will work. Here are the steps I used...

1. We have a project called "Report Viewer". This project is signed using a key, MySnKey.snk via Properties > Signing > Sign the assembly , choose a strong name key file: MySnKey.snk.
2. All forms have been updated to Localizable = True
3. We processed all the resx files into German de-DE. There are only two resx: MainForm.resx (project root directory) and Resources.resx (Properties directory).
4. I have a folder with MainForm.de-DE.resx and Resources.de-DE.resx which are the translated versions of these files.

5. Using resgen,

   > "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\ResGen" /compile Resources.de-DE.resx ReportViewer.Resources.de-DE.resources

   > "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\ResGen" /compile MainForm.de-DE.resx ReportViewer.MainForm.de-DE.resources

This creates the appropriate .resources files. Now to link, I use AL.exe:

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL" /t:lib /embed:ReportViewer.MainForm.de-DE.resources,ReportViewer.Resources.de-DE.resources /culture:de-DE /out:ReportViewer.resources.dll /template:../../../Output/ReportViewer/bin/Debug/ReportViewer.exe /keyfile:../MySnKey.snk

This creates a ReportViewer.resources.dll file. If I place it into the appropriate sub folder de-DE>ReportViewer.resources.dll, no luck. In Program.cs, before Run is called, I have

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("de-DE");

IF, I only include the MainForm like

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL" /t:lib /embed:ReportViewer.MainForm.de-DE.resources /culture:de-DE /out:ReportViewer.resources.dll /template:../../../Output/ReportViewer/bin/Debug/ReportViewer.exe /keyfile:../MySnKey.snk

The appropriate resources are displayed.

This is quite confusing to me. If I add the .resx files to the solution, and compile, the output dll works correctly, but we are trying to avoid having to bring these satellite translations into the solution.

No errors are generated and the files are created so I'm lost as to what I'm not doing.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I compared the differences between the output dll when adding the files to the solution to the output file when running AL.exe and they both contain all the translations.

EDIT to include solution since I can't answer the question

Apparently I got confused with the embed option and it's usage. To properly use the AL.exe utility, I had to use:

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\ResGen" Resources.de-DE.resx ReportViewer.Properties.Resources.de-DE.resources

Notice above that the Properties namespace is added. I had not done that before.

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\ResGen" MainForm.de-DE.resx  ReportViewer.MainForm.de-DE.resources

Notice that no Properties namespace is added since MainForm is Simply in the ReportViewer namespace.

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL" 
/t:lib
/embed:ReportViewer.Properties.Resources.de-DE.resources
/embed:ReportViewer.MainForm.de-DE.resources 
/culture:de-DE /out:ReportViewer.resources.dll /template:../../../Output/ReportViewer/bin/Debug/ReportViewer.exe /keyfile:../MySnKey.snk

Notice that there are multiple /embed items in this line. I was using the comma, which renames the internals and is not what I wanted. Providing a space between the files gives a (seemingly) unrelated error. See http://ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/10/14/local2.htm?page=2 for a great article.

For completeness, another way of writing this script would be

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\ResGen" Resources.de-DE.resx

notice that no renaming is done here, the output is simply Resources.de-DE.resources

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\ResGen" MainForm.de-DE.resx

notice that no renaming is done here, the output is simply MainForm.de-DE.resources

> "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL" /t:lib
/embed:Resources.de-DE.resources,ReportViewer.Properties.Resources.de-DE.resources
/embed:MainForm.de-DE.resources,ReportViewer.MainForm.de-DE.resources
/culture:de-DE
/out:ReportViewer.resources.dll /template:../../../Output/ReportViewer/bin/Debug/ReportViewer.exe /keyfile:../MySnKey.snk

Notice that the renaming is done following the comma in the embed option. The first argument is the file name (the .resources file) and after the comma is the fully qualified name (namespace.class.xx-XX.resources).

Answered in the post before I knew I could answer it here.