How to embed a satellite assembly into the EXE file

Question

I got the problem that I need to distribute a C# project as a single EXE file which is not an installer but the real program. It also needs to include a translation which currently resides in a subdirectory.

Is it possible to embed it directly into the binary?

Answer 1

The short answer is yes, there is a program called Assembly Linker (AL.exe) that will embed assemblies in this way. Its main use case is localization, sounds like that is what you need it for too. If so, it should be straightforward.

Eg:

al /t:lib /embed:strings.de.resources /culture:de /out:MyApp.resources.dll

or

al.exe /culture:en-US /out:bin\Debug\en-US\HelloWorld.resources.dll /embed:Resources\MyResources.en-US.resources,HelloWorld.Resources.MyResources.en-US.resources /template:bin\Debug\HelloWorld.exe

This is an example walkthrough of it MSDN with the above examples and more. Also you may want to read this blog post which explains its usage a bit further.

Answer 2

Another option is to embed the other assemblies as an EmbededResource. Then handle the app domains AssemblyResolve, from here you can read the assembly from the resource and load it into the runtime. Something like the following:

public class HookResolver
{
 Dictionary<string, Assembly> _loaded;

 public HookResolver()
 {
  _loaded = new Dictionary<string, Assembly>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
  AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += new ResolveEventHandler(CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve);
 }

 System.Reflection.Assembly CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve(object sender, ResolveEventArgs args)
 {
  string name = args.Name.Split(',')[0];
  Assembly asm;
  lock (_loaded)
  {
   if (!_loaded.TryGetValue(name, out asm))
   {
    using (Stream io = this.GetType().Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream(name))
    {
     byte[] bytes = new BinaryReader(io).ReadBytes((int)io.Length);
     asm = Assembly.Load(bytes);
     _loaded.Add(name, asm);
    }
   }
  }
  return asm;
 }
}

Answer 3

ILMerge will create a single exe file for your application. You can download it from Microsoft. It merges assemblies together and can internalize them so that the merged classes are set to internal. This is what I have used to create single file releases a number of times. It is pretty easy to integrate into your build process.