What is a satellite assembly?
Ask by Anonymous User
Updated 08 May 2023
In .NET, a satellite assembly is a special kind of assembly that contains localized resources for a specific culture or language. Satellite assemblies are typically used in the context of internationalization and localization (i18n and l10n) to provide resources such as strings, images, and other data in different language and cultural contexts.
When an application is compiled, resources such as images, strings, and other data are included as part of the executable file. However, if your application needs to support multiple languages or cultures, it's not practical to include all resources for all cultures in the main executable. Instead, satellite assemblies are used to store resources for a specific language or culture that can be loaded at run time as needed. Satellite assemblies are named using a naming convention that includes the main assembly name, culture or language code, and .resources.dll file extension. For example, a French resource satellite assembly for a main assembly named MyApp.exe would be named MyApp.resources.fr.dll.
When an application needs to load a resource for a specific culture, the .NET runtime looks for the appropriate satellite assembly based on the current thread's culture settings. If a satellite assembly is found, resources are loaded from the satellite assembly instead of the main assembly.
Overall, satellite assemblies provide a flexible and efficient way to manage localized resources in .NET applications, enabling developers to create applications that are easily localized for different cultures and languages. .
binary format; for this purpose we use resegn.exe and al.exe.
resgen.exe convert a .resx file into resource file and then
al.exe convert it into binary format and send it to
satellite assembly;