Create copy of exe with different resource at runtime

Question

We'd like to offer our client the ability to make customised exes, based on ours, for their clients.

ie, basically the ability to make a copy of an exe with a different xml configuration file embedded in it. The "include it in the install" is not an option - we want this to look as if it was custom made for our client's clients.

I'm currently thinking of writing a dll at runtime including the resource (using an AssemblyBuilder), and then calling ILMerge to embed it in the final exe, but this is slightly more hackish than I would like.

So it's a tall-ask, but perhaps worth asking anyway: is there a .NET library which allows modifying a .NET exe's resources which could avoid the whole "dll holding a resource embedded by ILMerge" bit?

Or alternatively, is there a better approach to this which still meets the stated goals?

Answer 1

Sounds like alot of work to replace it once its already compiled. I would do it with a build script, a param, and different resource files.