I ran into this issue when working on a product for our company. I didn't find an answer anywhere, so I'm going to post my solution to it here in case someone else finds themselves in the same situation.
As of .NET 4.0 there is a solution to this issue, because satellite assemblies now get passed to the AssemblyResolve handler. If you already have a plugin system where assemblies can be loaded from remote directories, you'll probably already have an assembly resolve handler in place, you just need to extend it to use a different search behaviour for satellite resource assemblies. If you don't have one, the implementation is non-trivial since you basically take responsibility for all assembly search behaviour. I'll post the complete code for a working solution so either way you'd be covered. First of all, you need to hook your AssemblyResolve handler somewhere, like this:
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += ResolveAssemblyReference;
Then assuming you've got a couple of variables to hold path information for your main application and your plugin directories, like this:
string _processAssemblyDirectoryPath;
List<string> _assemblySearchPaths;
Then you need a little helper method that looks a little like this:
static Assembly LoadAssembly(string assemblyPath)
{
// If the target assembly is already loaded, return the existing assembly instance.
Assembly[] loadedAssemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();
Assembly targetAssembly = loadedAssemblies.FirstOrDefault((x) => !x.IsDynamic && String.Equals(x.Location, assemblyPath, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
if (targetAssembly != null)
{
return targetAssembly;
}
// Attempt to load the target assembly
return Assembly.LoadFile(assemblyPath);
}
And finally you need the all important AssemblyResolve event handler, which looks a little something like this:
Assembly ResolveAssemblyReference(object sender, ResolveEventArgs args)
{
// Obtain information about the requested assembly
AssemblyName targetAssemblyName = new AssemblyName(args.Name);
string targetAssemblyFileName = targetAssemblyName.Name + ".dll";
// Handle satellite assembly load requests. Note that prior to .NET 4.0, satellite assemblies didn't get
// passed to AssemblyResolve handlers. When this was changed, there is a specific guarantee that if null is
// returned, normal load procedures will be followed for the satellite assembly, IE, it will be located and
// loaded in the same manner as if this event handler wasn't registered. This isn't sufficient for us
// though, as the normal load behaviour doesn't correctly locate satellite assemblies where the owning
// assembly has been loaded using Assembly.LoadFile where the assembly is located in a different folder to
// the process assembly. We handle that here by performing the satellite assembly search process ourselves.
// Also note that satellite assemblies are formally documented as requiring the file name extension of
// ".resources.dll", so detecting satellite assembly load requests by comparing with this known string is a
// valid approach.
if (targetAssemblyFileName.EndsWith(".resources.dll"))
{
// Retrieve the owning assembly which is requesting the satellite assembly
string owningAssemblyName = targetAssemblyFileName.Replace(".resources.dll", ".dll");
Assembly owningAssembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies().FirstOrDefault((x) => x.Location.EndsWith(owningAssemblyName));
if (owningAssembly == null)
{
return null;
}
// Retrieve the directory containing the owning assembly
string owningAssemblyDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(owningAssembly.Location);
// Search for the required satellite assembly in resource subdirectories, and load it if found.
CultureInfo searchCulture = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
while (searchCulture != CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
{
string resourceAssemblyPath = Path.Combine(owningAssemblyDirectory, searchCulture.Name, targetAssemblyFileName);
if (File.Exists(resourceAssemblyPath))
{
Assembly resourceAssembly = LoadAssembly(resourceAssemblyPath);
if (resourceAssembly != null)
{
return resourceAssembly;
}
}
searchCulture = searchCulture.Parent;
}
return null;
}
// If the target assembly exists in the same directory as the requesting assembly, attempt to load it now.
string requestingAssemblyPath = (args.RequestingAssembly != null) ? args.RequestingAssembly.Location : String.Empty;
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(requestingAssemblyPath))
{
string callingAssemblyDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(requestingAssemblyPath);
string targetAssemblyInCallingDirectoryPath = Path.Combine(callingAssemblyDirectory, targetAssemblyFileName);
if (File.Exists(targetAssemblyInCallingDirectoryPath))
{
try
{
return LoadAssembly(targetAssemblyInCallingDirectoryPath);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Log an error
return null;
}
}
}
// If the target assembly exists in the same directory as the process executable, attempt to load it now.
string processDirectory = _processAssemblyDirectoryPath;
string targetAssemblyInProcessDirectoryPath = Path.Combine(processDirectory, targetAssemblyFileName);
if (File.Exists(targetAssemblyInProcessDirectoryPath))
{
try
{
return LoadAssembly(targetAssemblyInProcessDirectoryPath);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Log an error
return null;
}
}
// Build a list of all assemblies with the requested name in the defined list of assembly search paths
Dictionary<string, AssemblyName> assemblyVersionInfo = new Dictionary<string, AssemblyName>();
foreach (string assemblyDir in _assemblySearchPaths)
{
// If the target assembly doesn't exist in this path, skip it.
string assemblyPath = Path.Combine(assemblyDir, targetAssemblyFileName);
if (!File.Exists(assemblyPath))
{
continue;
}
// Attempt to retrieve detailed information on the name and version of the target assembly
AssemblyName matchAssemblyName;
try
{
matchAssemblyName = AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(assemblyPath);
}
catch (Exception)
{
continue;
}
// Add this assembly to the list of possible target assemblies
assemblyVersionInfo.Add(assemblyPath, matchAssemblyName);
}
// Look for an exact match of the target version
string matchAssemblyPath = assemblyVersionInfo.Where((x) => x.Value == targetAssemblyName).Select((x) => x.Key).FirstOrDefault();
if (matchAssemblyPath == null)
{
// If no exact target version match exists, look for the highest available version.
Dictionary<string, AssemblyName> assemblyVersionInfoOrdered = assemblyVersionInfo.OrderByDescending((x) => x.Value.Version).ToDictionary((x) => x.Key, (x) => x.Value);
matchAssemblyPath = assemblyVersionInfoOrdered.Select((x) => x.Key).FirstOrDefault();
}
// If no matching assembly was found, log an error, and abort any further processing.
if (matchAssemblyPath == null)
{
return null;
}
// If the target assembly is already loaded, return the existing assembly instance.
Assembly loadedAssembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies().FirstOrDefault((x) => String.Equals(x.Location, matchAssemblyPath, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
if (loadedAssembly != null)
{
return loadedAssembly;
}
// Attempt to load the target assembly
try
{
return LoadAssembly(matchAssemblyPath);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Log an error
}
return null;
}
The first part of that event handler deals with satellite resource assemblies, then the search behaviour I use for regular assemblies follows that. This should be enough to help anyone get a system like this working from scratch.
.\de-DE\Assembly.resources.dlletc. – Webby.refers to the directory of the application, then the structure is as follows..\Plugins\PluginX.dlland their resources are stored like this.\Plugins\de-DE\PluginX.resources.dll,.\Plugins\us-GB\PluginX.resources.dlland so on. – WebbyResourceManagerdoesn't use the localized resources:.is the folder of the executable and working directory containing.\App.exe..\de\App.resources.dllare the localized resources of the executable..\plugins\testplugin\testplugin.dllis the plugin DLL..\plugins\testplugin\de\testplugin.resources.dllcontains the localized resources of the plugin. Anyway, I also copied the plugin plus resources into.\plugins\testplugin.dllas in your post, but it still uses the invariant default resource strings embedded in the plugin. – Abreast