How can I temporarily disable the Multilingual App Toolkit?

Question

I have a Windows Store App (Windows 8) that is currently using the Multilingual Toolkit to translate many strings into many languages. Unfortunately, this has made it so that each build of my app takes upwards of 6 minutes! This makes minor changes to my app excruciating and completely demolishes my work flow.

Is there any way I can temporarily disable the Multilingual App Toolkit without affecting any of my language files, so that I can do quick development, but still be able to return to using the Multilingual Toolkit as I had previously?

Answer 1

NOTE: This will wipe all of your app settings and data. If you had anything saved in the local storage or in the App Settings that you wanted to keep, make sure to back them up first.

The easiest and relatively quickest way I have encountered is to:

1. Unload your app project
2. Right click your app project and go to "Edit MyAppProject.csproj"

3. At the bottom of the .csproj is the line:

   <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\\Microsoft\\Multilingual App Toolkit\\Microsoft.Multilingual.WindowsStore.targets" Condition="Exists('$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\\Microsoft\\Multilingual App Toolkit\\Microsoft.Multilingual.WindowsStore.targets')" Label="MultilingualAppToolkit" />

4. Comment out this line by adding <!-- before and --> after.

5. Save the .csproj and reload your project.

All of your .xliff files should still be there, but when you build the project, the MultilingualAppToolkit will not call MakePRI, so it won't take a long time to build.

In order to reverse this process:

1. Repeat steps 1-3 listed previously.
2. Remove the comment markers ( <!-- and --> ).
3. Save the .csproj and reload your project.

Your app should now be calling the Multilingual App Toolkit as normal, and the app package created should have the combined resources.pri files.