GenerateResource task does not support non-string resources on .NET core

[nguerrera]

From @tarekgh on June 14, 2017 15:54

@Spongman commented on Tue Jun 13 2017

a (.csproj) project a with an embedded text file, added using the VS2017.2 project properties UI.

ConsoleApp2.zip

on windows, it works fine.

on linux, it just shows:

$ dotnet --version
1.0.4
$ uname -a
Linux mybox 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ dotnet run
..\Resources\New Text Document.txt;System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089;Windows-1252

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@danmosemsft commented on Tue Jun 13 2017

@tarekgh are there any known issues here?

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@tarekgh commented on Wed Jun 14 2017

Please take a look at the issue https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3695 this was CLI issue and I believe it is already fixed but I am not sure which release include the fix. I'll move this issue to CLI repo.

Copied from original issue: dotnet/cli#6866

[nguerrera]

MSBuild does not support currently support non-string resources on .NET Core. However, it is not checking the resx data's type attribute, but instead blindly using the value as a string. This should either work or have a clear "not supported" error at build time.

Relevant snippet from repro project resx:

  <data name="New Text Document" type="System.Resources.ResXFileRef, System.Windows.Forms">
    <value>..\Resources\New Text Document.txt;System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089;Windows-1252</value>
  </data>

Code that is not checking the type attribute:
https://github.com/Microsoft/msbuild/blob/cc727f715651f305639ad8635fefc40165299f86/src/Tasks/GenerateResource.cs#L2909-L2920

It might be easy enough to actually handle this ResxFileRef-to-string case correctly. If we do that, we still need a clear error in other non-string data cases.

[eltiare]

I am eagerly awaiting the embedding of all resources via the commandline as it will make my life easier with the watch command.

[ThatRendle]

As a stop-gap solution while we wait for resource embedding to become a properly-supported, cross-platform, I created a dotnet tool which does something vaguely similar: https://github.com/RendleLabs/Embedder/blob/master/README.md

(I forgot to git push, will do that soon)

[jetersen]

This also applies to images even on Windows using dotnet build, msbuild 😭

.NET Command Line Tools (2.0.2)

Product Information:
 Version:            2.0.2
 Commit SHA-1 hash:  a04b4bf512

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Windows
 OS Version:  10.0.16299
 OS Platform: Windows
 RID:         win10-x64
 Base Path:   C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.2\

Microsoft .NET Core Shared Framework Host

  Version  : 2.0.0
  Build    : e8b8861ac7faf042c87a5c2f9f2d04c98b69f28d

[viktors-telle]

Any ETA on fixing this?

[auxym]

I'm also getting with issue with dotnet build / dotnet msbuild, but not with the msbuild.exe packaged with VS2017, which seems to correctly embed string resources.

[AlgorithmsAreCool]

This explains a lot. I had a WinForms application that would fail to launch at runtime with dotnet build but worked fine in VS2017. I was getting an InvalidCastException when loading an image resource.

EDIT
As auxym says, dotnet msbuild does not work as of cli version 2.1.2. You need to call the msbuild visual studio installs. For me this is located at:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe"

For some reason this still does not work in release configuration. I have to use debug to get the resources embedded correctly. Hope this helps until a proper fix is available.

[mikebridge]

I have a ResourceManager.GetObject call on an embedded resource which succeeds on windows but fails with the following error on using dotnetcore 2.0.3 (from the dotnet-sdk-2.0.3 docker image) on Linux:

System.InvalidCastException : Unable to cast object of type 'System.String' to type 'System.Byte[]'.

Is this a related issue?

I have an embedded text file "grades.json" which is accessed via the autogenerated Resources.Designer.cs file. That error message occurs here:

internal static byte[] grades {
    get {
        object obj = ResourceManager.GetObject("grades", resourceCulture);
        return ((byte[])(obj));
    }
}

[danmoseley]

ResourceManager will support binary blobs in resources with https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/26745. I am guessing this is also "Unable to cast object of type 'System.String' to type 'System.Byte[]'" .. @ViktorHofer can verify.

I had a WinForms application that would fail to launch at runtime with dotnet build

Bear in mind that Winforms is not supported on .NET Core so if it's actually a Winforms app you will hit more errors after this when you try to load a Winforms type.

One other Winforms caveat: the set of binary-serializable types is smaller in .NET Core than in .NET Framework (list) and it does not include for example Image, Icon and Font - types that the Winforms designer likes to binary serialize into resources.

[mikebridge]

@danmosemsft this particular instance is a c# library called from a webapp.