gettextnet

A .NET port of GNU gettext for internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n). Provides a runtime library for loading .po/.mo translations and CLI tools to extract strings from C# source and compile .po files to .mo binaries.

Originally forked from the Mono project. Published on NuGet under the Stride.* namespace.

Requires .NET 10 or later.

Packages

Package	NuGet ID	Version	Description
Core library	Stride.GNU.Gettext	3.0.0	Runtime API for loading translations
Argument parser	Stride.GNU.Getopt	3.0.0	POSIX-compatible CLI argument parsing
msgfmt tool	GNU.Gettext.Msgfmt	—	Compiles .po → satellite assemblies
xgettext tool	GNU.Gettext.Xgettext	—	Extracts translatable strings from C#

Usage

Runtime (library)

using GNU.Gettext;

var catalog = new GettextResourceManager();

// Simple string
catalog.GetString("Hello, world!")

// With format arguments
catalog.GetStringFmt("Running as process {0}.", Environment.ProcessId)

// Plural form
catalog.GetPluralString("found {0} similar word", "found {0} similar words", count)

// Context-disambiguated string
catalog.GetParticularString("Computers", "Text encoding")

Translations are loaded from satellite assemblies (.resources.dll) following standard .NET resource fallback. The resource base name must end in .Messages (e.g. MyApp.Messages).

Workflow

1. Extract translatable strings from C# source into a .pot template:

   xgettext-net -D src/ --recursive -o messages.pot
   

2. Create per-language .po files from the template and translate them.

3. Compile .po files to satellite assemblies:

   msgfmt-net -r MyApp.Messages -l fr-FR -d out/ fr.po
   

4. Deploy the satellite assemblies alongside your application.

Tools

msgfmt-net

Usage: msgfmt-net [OPTIONS] filename.po ...

  -r resource     Base resource name (e.g. MyApp.Messages — suffix added automatically)
  -o file         Output .resources file (ignored when -d is used)
  -d directory    Output directory; locale subdirectory is created automatically
  -l locale       .NET culture name (e.g. fr-FR, ru)
  -L path         Path to GNU.Gettext.dll
  --check-format  Validate C# format strings
  --csharp-resources  Produce a .resources file instead of a satellite assembly
  -h, --help

xgettext-net

Usage: xgettext-net [options] [inputfile | filemask] ...

  -f file         Read input filenames from file
  -o file         Output POT file (default: messages.pot)
  -D directory    Input directory (repeatable)
  --recursive     Process subdirectories
  --from-code     Input encoding (default: UTF-8)
  -j              Join with existing output file
  -v, --verbose
  -h, --help

Building

cd GNU.Gettext
dotnet build GNU.Gettext.sln
dotnet test GNU.Gettext.Test/GNU.Gettext.Test.csproj

Pack the tools as NuGet packages:

dotnet pack GNU.Gettext.Msgfmt/GNU.Gettext.Msgfmt.csproj -o ../nupkg
dotnet pack GNU.Gettext.Xgettext/GNU.Gettext.Xgettext.csproj -o ../nupkg

License

• Library (GNU.Gettext.dll), tools, and GNU.Getopt.dll: LGPL v2.1 or later
• Documentation: GPL v3 or later

See COPYING.txt for details.