Bad Error Message in ResourceManager

[mandalorianbob]

I just ran into an issue with the ResourceManager and while the issue was my fault, the error I got out of it caused me to spin my wheels for a while.

I am creating a .NET Standard library for some internal development. And to avoid having to pass around and maintain resource files, I am including localized resources in the nuget package. However, I cannot depend on using thread culture for retrieving resources, because there's no guarantee that the thread culture is what is to be used. (Both UWP and Unity might be using this library.)

Thus, I needed to take in a CultureInfo object, and then get Resources based on that, using a ResourceManager.

In order to get Nuget to package the resources correctly I had to name them all [Name].[locale].resx. (Another undocumented pitfall.) Unfortunately, I also did this to the en-us resources. This was incorrect, but I didn't know that.

So when I tried to make a ResourceManager looking for the appropriate resources by passing an "en-us" CultureInfo object, I got back an error that said it couldn't find them.

System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException: Could not find the resource "[Name].resources" among the resources "[Unrelated].resources" embedded in the assembly "[Assembly]", nor among the resources in any satellite assemblies for the specified culture. Perhaps the resources were embedded with an incorrect name.

But of course, in the Resource Manager code we see

if (lookForCulture.HasInvariantCultureName && _mediator.FallbackLoc == UltimateResourceFallbackLocation.MainAssembly)
{
      // don't bother looking in satellites in this case
      satellite = _mediator.MainAssembly;
}

So this error message really messed me up. Because what was actually happening was not what the error message said was happening. The Satellite assembly was after all, getting created. (It creates the satellite assembly regardless of the culture's name.) And the resx had the correct name, but it accidentally had the locale when it shouldn't have.

I tried finding documentation, but that just lead me around in circles. Of course, part of the problem was that I wasn't misusing the API, it was the data that was wrong.

Thankfully when I realized I could just step through the code (thanks SourceLink!) I found this and realized what was going on.

But this whole process was very poorly documented and this particular pitfall was really exacerbated by this particular error message not mentioning anything about the invariant culture or the fact that the satellite assemblies would get skipped in the event of culture name matching the invariant culture.

Localization has proven to have more pitfalls than expected, and at almost every step when something failed, it feels like it was very hard to figure out what failed. I'm hoping at least this small part could be corrected.

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[danmoseley]

Hi @mandalorianbob are you asking for the culture to be in the message? Or for it to only mention satellite assys if it's not invariant culture? Thanks for the feedback!

[mandalorianbob]

I don't know if the culture needs to be there. So I guess the important information is: The Invariant Culture resources are missing. If that had been communicated that would've helped tremendously. That might be hard to specifically check for. "Satellite Assemblies are not checked if the Invariant Culture is used" might be generically appropriate?

[tarekgh]

I don't know if the culture needs to be there. So I guess the important information is: The Invariant Culture resources are missing. If that had been communicated that would've helped tremendously. That might be hard to specifically check for. "Satellite Assemblies are not checked if the Invariant Culture is used" might be generically appropriate?

Were you using Invariant culture to lookup the resources in your scenario?

[mandalorianbob]

Only by accident. I was using "new CultureInfo("en-us")" but as you can see from the code in Resource Manager that it checks "lookForCulture.HasInvariantCultureName" - which I assume is true in my case. (It might be true because as part of the Nuget package process, I had set the neutral language to be en-us, which I thought would actually take the en-us resources and use them as the invariant resources.)

So I wasn't trying to. I was just trying to access the en-us resources.

[tarekgh]

@mandalorianbob thanks for the info. so it looks the exception message still correct :-) but it looks was not helpful in your case as you were thinking the resources was requested with en-US but the reality it was requested with Invariant Culture. maybe the request here is to mention in the message the culture name used during the lookup.

[mandalorianbob]

I mean ... maybe. I guess as long as it says InvariantCulture and it doesn't just tell me that it was en-US because I'll already know that.

I mean, to be clear, my request is for it to not say that it checked satellite assemblies when it specifically didn't. But yeah, a potential workaround might be saying that InvariantCulture was used, which would perhaps imply that no satellite assemblies would be checked. I mean, as someone external to the ResourcesManager it's hard to tell ... maybe some Remarks in the ResourceManager class somewhere?

Honestly, if it just said

Perhaps the resources were embedded with the wrong name, or the Invariant Culture was specified and no Invariant Culture resources were found.

That'd probably be more useful as it involves less implying things.