Crossplatform ResourceUpdater

[anatawa12]

I tried to implement resource updater based on Mono.Cecil.Binary from mono repository System.Reflection.Metadata and Compiler/Win32Resources

Fixes #3828
Fixes #88465

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Issue Details

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I tried to implement resource updater based on Mono.Cecil.Binary from mono repository

Fixes #3828

Author:	anatawa12
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-HostModel
Milestone:	-

[vitek-karas]

/cc @elinor-fung

[anatawa12]

The test failure AppHost.Bundle.Tests_net8.0_arm64.html and HostActivation.Tests_net8.0_arm64.html are failed also on main branch in my environment (08a6e06) so I think those failure is not produced by my changes.

[vitek-karas]

The test failures are suspect - these tests suites are exactly those which target the functionality around the ResourceUpdater... so we need to figure out what's wrong.

[anatawa12]

Sorry I found the failure on main branch is my fault.
I fixed ResourceUpdater and ResourceWriter.

[elinor-fung]

Thanks a lot for tackling this @anatawa12.

Some high level comments/questions about the implementation:

1. Microsoft.NET.HostModel already depends on System.Reflection.Metadata. There seems to be quite some overlap between the functionality being pulled into Mono.Cecil.Binary and what is already provided in System.Reflection.PortableExecutable - specifically PEReader.
   • Could this use the reading functionality available in System.Reflection.Metadata instead?
2. The runtime repo has some code used by other tools to read resource data into a model and update it: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/tree/main/src/coreclr/tools/Common/Compiler/Win32Resources
   • Could this re-use that resource data model instead?

In general, I'm looking to re-use existing code/functionality and pull in as little new logic as possible that we would have to ship in the SDK and maintain separately from other implementations. I think if the two things above are doable, it would just leave the actual writing/patching as new logic specific to HostModel.

Testing is probably my biggest concern here. This basically affects every build targeting Windows. Unfortunately, even running on Windows, we have a significant test hole around resource updating.

With the exception of those two tests, that were failing and you addressed, the tests in the runtime repo aren't actually using ResourceUpdater (if they were, I expect more tests would have failed). There is one test in dotnet/sdk that explicitly targets resources being copied from the managed dll, but that would only catch failures when we try to integrate runtime into sdk, rather than when the changes are made in runtime.

Ideally, we would have:

• Unit tests for ResourceUpdater
  • Something basic like updating and reading it back to check that a resource was added
• Integration tests using HostModel to update an apphost
  • Most tests in this repo don't actually go through HostWriter/ResourceUpdater and the ones that do actually don't pass in a binary from which to copy resources. I'm going to look into this - this was a surprise to me and we need to fix it.
• E2E tests for cross-building an app on Unix targeting Windows
  • I don't think we really have a good mechanism for doing this in runtime. I believe the sdk repo has some tests that cross-build, so that may be where we add tests like this.

[anatawa12]

Could this use the reading functionality available in System.Reflection.Metadata instead?

I think yes. I didn't know about System.Reflection.Metadata. I'm going to rewriting with System.Reflection.Metadata.

Could this re-use that resource data model instead?

I think data model can be reused but I think we need new writing resource logic because it looks current logic is for object file, not suitable for image files. writing logic may also reusable.

[elinor-fung]

Final minor comment. Excited to see this come together - thank you!

[anatawa12]

#90136 fixed the CI failure. Thank you.

[elinor-fung]

Thank you, @anatawa12!

[matt-richardson]

@anatawa12 - you are a legend. Thanks!

[akirayamamoto]

Thank you @anatawa12, that is awesome!

[agocke]

@anatawa12 Thanks for your contribution, this is great! Really excellent work.

[vitek-karas]

Thanks a lot @anatawa12 - this is great.