Avoiding duplicate icon resources in a .NET (C#) project

Question

I'm using Visual C# 2008 Express. I'd like to use the same icon for the application (ie, the icon shown for the .exe), and for the main form. Unfortunately, VC# doesn't seem to be very smart about this, and insists on duplicating the icon data.

There doesn't seem to be a way of selecting an "already embedded" icon for use in the form or project icon (only selecting a file), and using the same file for both icons just embeds the file twice as far as I can see. It's not a big deal (hard drive space is cheap now, right?), but it bugs me.

Any idea how to avoid this? Is there a way to programatically load the executable's icon for use when the form is constructed, say? A couple of forum posts about similar things seem to suggest that .NET resources don't use the normal old Windows resource system -- is there a way from within the framework of getting at the old-style resources? Or do I have to bind the Win32 API functions to do it?

Answer 1

You're right, and it's rather annoying.

You have to load the icons yourself instead of relying on designer-generated code. Save the icon as a project resource, then load the resource into the form's Icon property in the form's constructor:

this.Icon = Properties.Resources.myIconResourceName;