How to extend Windows version applet infrormation

Question

Hello *,

Is there any way to extend the information in the Windows File Version dialog. All standard attributes are already in use, in a way that I am not allowed to append additional information to them. What I need is a sort of new attribute class, which can be used as additional value shown as one of the items of File Properties/Version applet under:

Other version information:
 Item name:                    Value:
  Assembly Version              Information related to my additional attribute
  File Version
  Language
  Product Name
  Product Version
 >My Additional Attribute

Many thanks,
Ovanes

P.S. after getting an answer to work with resource editor or some command line tool, which injects additional resources I would like to clarify the current project setup. We have more than 700 assemblies. We currently use a global file AssemblyVersion.cs which is included in the compilation of every assembly. All version fields are filled there once and included during the build in all assemblies. The problem is that I have is the strict policy what they must contain. In the AssemblyVersion.cs all common (project-related) data is embedded like:

[assembly: AssemblyCopyright("My global copyright message")]

Predefined non-common fields are free to be specified in Assembly own version file. If these fields are specified there and I also put them into global AssemblyVersion.cs there will be compiler errors. Since we generate strong name assemblies hacking with resource editor will destroy the signature. Importing the resource file in all 700 assemblies might take considerable amount of time. As the best approach I see to write an own attribute class to be used like:

[assembly: MyAssemblyAttribute("Some data goes here")]

How to make this attribute show in the file version dialog?

Answer 1

The information in the Windows File Version dialog is stored in a Version data resource as part of the Win32 EXE file. There are lots of tools (graphical and console based) that can edit resources and add new data to the version data. Maybe you can use one of the console based ones to add your information automatically after building?

Alternatively, you could create a Win32 resource with a resource compiler and try to import it during building. There's a csc option for this:

The /win32res option inserts a Win32 resource in the output file. [...]

A Win32 resource can contain version or bitmap (icon) information that would help identify your application in the Windows Explorer.