ReswFileCodeGenerator disappears from Custom Tool property

[Lorenz5600]

Hi,

I'm trying to use the extension with VS 2026 (WinUi3 project). Whenever I enter "ReswFileCodeGenerator" into the custom tool property (german version, here it's called "Benutzerdefiniertes Tool") of my resources.resw, it disappears. When I hit enter after typing it stays for some time, but a rebuild removes the property again.

Strangely, even if the property field is empty, it shows up in my .csproj:

<ItemGroup>
	<PRIResource Update="Strings\Resources.resw">
		<Generator>ReswFileCodeGenerator</Generator>
	</PRIResource>
</ItemGroup>

but no class is generated at all. Unfortunately, I don't see any errors I could start messing around with.

Any ideas what could go wrong here and where to start?

Thanks in advance

Jake

[christianhelle]

@Lorenz5600 Thanks for taking the time bringing this up.

It works on my machine... famous words 😄

Do you get the same problem in other project types? I have only tested it on a normal console app, which doesn't even really use the ResW file, but the custom tool setup works fine and a C# file is generated upon every change to the ResW file.

Do you mind sharing the exact details of your Visual Studio 2026 setup? You can get this from Help -> About Microsoft Visual Studio -> Copy Info

I'll try and investigate what could be wrong...

[Lorenz5600]

Inside a console app I don't get the .resw-Template as option, but I tried again in a fresh WinUi3 app, also on another machine, same result.

Here's my info (I stripped the comments):

.NET MAUI-Tools 18.0.343 (e540c31511)

ASP.NET and Web Tools 18.0.333.805

Azure App Service-Tools v3.0.0 18.0.333.805

Azure Functions and Web Jobs Tools 18.0.333.805

C#-Tools 5.0.0-2.25529.7+68a9207cafc10bb08d345e32f06dd1a91ab7a6a2

GitHub Copilot 18.0.934.24903

Mono Debugging for Visual Studio 18.0.15 (76f6142551)

NuGet-Paket-Manager 7.0.0

Razor (ASP.NET Core) 18.0.2.2551302+48a2659b91e7032c97ea024751a6ea9469a94d7f

SonarQube for Visual Studio 9.0.0.15771

SQL Server Data Tools 18.0.172.3

TypeScript-Tools 18.0.1114.2009

Visual Basic-Tools 5.0.0-2.25529.7+68a9207cafc10bb08d345e32f06dd1a91ab7a6a2

Visual F# Tools 18.0.0-rc2.25522.6+db81a081913bbaa32e528305723c07d98fd598b8

Visual Studio IntelliCode 2.2.3152.23957

VSPackage-Erweiterung 1.0

Xamarin Designer 18.0.1.33 (remotes/origin/HEAD@44462085bc)

Thanks for your help.

[GF-Huang]

Same for me. It seems does not generate anything.

[christianhelle]

I finally got to try it out with WinUI... surely enough it doesn't seem to work when the .resw uses the PRIResource build action. Not sure why this is the case (or what this even means) as I haven't worked with WinUI before. I'll experiment a bit more and see what I can do

[christianhelle]

Folks, I think I need to take a different for this and move away from using single file code generators (Custom Tool).

Here's are some possible solutions:

• The user has to right click the .resw file from the solution explorer and say re-generate
• A source generator that does automagically generates code for all the .resw files in the project, whenever they are changed from Visual Studio, or during build time with the .NET CLI
• Provide an MSBuild task shipped as a nuget package that automagically generates code for all the .resw files in the project that references the MSBuild task package

@Lorenz5600 @GF-Huang Any preferences?