VS2010: "Select Resource" dialog & resx location

Question

Got two issues with the VS2010 / VS2008 select resource dialog - the one that appears when you want to add an image to a button in a WinForms app for example.

Give me my files back!

It only seems to see the default project resources file (Properties\Resources.resx), and resx files in project root (say MyProject\famfamfam.resx).

We have quite a few icons all over the app, and because some of them come from different icon sets (like famfamfam), and some are related to this project only we'd like to keep them separate. For that same reason (keeping solution neat & tidy) we want to store these extra resource files in the Resources folder (eg. Resources\famfamfam.resx).

However, we'd also like to keep using the Select Resource dialog :-) Because it does not see the 'extra' resource files, we're having to select a 'fake' icon now (from the global Resources.resx file) and then manually change that to reference the right icon in .Designer.cs. As you can imagine, this is a pain.

Stop modifying my files!

Second issue is a bit more annoying. We use the excellent MultiLang add-in for Visual Studio to globalize our app. It stores its translations in MultiLang.resx & MultiLang.XY.resx files in the project root, where XY is a language code, eg. .cs.resx for Czech. These have to be set to No code generation access modifier. What Select Resource seems to be doing is set all .resx files it can find to Internal.

Exec summary

• Is there a way to convince Select Resource dialog to look for extra .resx files anywhere besides the project root?
• Is there any way to stop it from modifying the access modifier of the resources it does see (other than file a bug with MS)?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

Has noone come across these issues? I was hoping you have :-)

Answer 2

As it seemed there were no answers to the above problems floating around, I went ahead and submitted two bug reports with Microsoft Connect: Select Resource dialog not finding resx files outside project root and unwittingly modifying resx files' access modifier.

If you are experiencing the same behaviour as described above/in these two bug reports, please go ahead and vote to get them fixed!

Answer 3

As a follow-up: Microsoft was very polite in saying how they were "rerouting this issue to the appropriate group within the Visual Studio Product Team for triage and resolution". However, noone from that group ever bothered to comment on the issue, and both bugs were simply closed as "Won't fix" this morning.

This makes Connect a laugh - I spent a good few hours exploring the issue, making sure it wasn't just my PC, etc. However, they never took the time to at the very least post an explanation why what is evidently a bug / major shortcoming concerning resource management won't ever be fixed. Nevermind actually fix the issues in question.

Smells of Apple's approach to 'fixing' problems by trying to mop them under the rug.