Add Satellite Assemblies To An Assembly For Any Culture

Since the very first release of the .NET Framework we have been able to build satellite assemblies for (almost) any culture. The critical factor though is that in order to do this either the original assembly must not have been signed or else you must be able to sign your satellite assembly with the same key. Clearly Microsoft will not give anyone the key they use to sign their assemblies so although Microsoft release various language versions of their products we, as consumers of those products, are unable to add our own language versions. This includes but is not limited to the .NET Framework itself, ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight.

I would like your help. I would like to optionally remove the restrictions on loading satellite assemblies. At present the satellite assembly must be signed with the same key as its parent assembly. I would like Microsoft to add a mechanism to the CLR which would optionally allow the author of the assembly to relax the rules on loading satellite assemblies such that it checks that the satellite assembly matches its parent in all criteria *except* for the key with which it is signed.

In this were possible then communities would be able to add support for their own language without waiting for Microsoft to support them. Close to home, this would mean that we could have a Welsh version of the .NET Framework (or ASP.NET MVC). This desire isn't limited solely to getting support for Welsh; the feature would work for all languages (there are ~7000 languages in the world and the .NET Framework 4 supports 23 of them so this affects a community near you).

So here's where I would like your help. If you think this is a useful feature please vote for it on User Voice here.

Thanks.

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Posted by: guysmithferrier
Posted on: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 3:25 PM
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Categories: Internationalization
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