What do you mean by Satellite Assembly in .NET?

You might be using resource files in your project. During deployment, it is not recommended to deploy resource files directly. Instead if you could convert it into an intermediate form which doesn’t include any source code then that will be the best practice to proceed with. This is achieved using satellite assemblies in .NET.

The resource files can either be of .txt extension or .resx extension. To convert these files into a Binary DLL file belonging to satellite assembly, you have to use two executables which are mentioned below:
• resgen.exe: This executable is used to convert resource files of extension .txt or .resx into files of extension .resources. Only files of .resources extension can be converted into binary DLL. This executable is also used to convert .txt files into .resx files.
• al.exe: This executable accepts the .resources files and .gif files if any and converts them into binary DLL file belonging to satellite assembly. This file will not include any code contents and hence deploying it is efficient as well as safe.

Assume that you have a text file sampleTxt.txt and a resource file sampleResx.resx. You have to package these files into a binary DLL for deployment. Along with these files, you also have two image files sampleImg1.gif, sampleImg2.gif. These files have to be packaged into the satellite assembly as well. How do you do it? That is pictorially represented using the diagram shown below:

IMAGE

This output.dll (the output as shown in the diagram above) is generated using the steps shown below. The steps represent the process explained in the diagram above and each step covers the syntax involved in each conversion.

Step1: Convert the text file sampleTxt.txt into file of extension .resx using resgen.exe:
For converting the text file into .resx file using the following command:
resgen sampleTxt.txt sampleTxt.resx

Step2: Convert sampleTxt.resx and sampleResx.resx into .resources file using resgen.exe:
Use the following commands for the conversion of .resx files into .resource files:
resgen sampleTxt.resx resource1.resources
resgen sampleResx.resx resource2.resources

Step3: Build the Satellite Assembly using the .resource files and .gif files:
Now you have two resource files namely resource1 and resource2. As stated in requirement, you have two image files namely sampleImg1.gif, sampleImg2.gif. You have to package all of them and create a satellite assembly containing binary DLL of all these files. For that use the following command:

al.exe /out: output.dll /c: de /embed: resource1.resources; resource2.resources; sampleImg1.gif; sampleImg2.gif

The output.dll generated out of this command is the satellite assembly which can be deployed there by hiding any code content of your resource files and also ensuring localization

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