resx files gone, causing build/runtime errors (VS 2005)   

Being a newbie to the VS.NET (2005, to be precise), I got into the
following situation: I didn't place .resx files under version control,
assuming that they were auto-generated by the IDE. Not sure why, but
my solution (Desktop forms app, SmartDevice 2.0 app, setup project)
suddenly lost all of the resx files. As a result, I have all kinds of
problems:

- Build failures. After some googling, I found some tips on manually
removing resource references from .csproj file. Did that and managed
to overcome most of the build problems, although the new resx files
look weird in the file list and I have no idea whether they were
generated properly.

- Runtime issues: now when I make an attempt to open one of the
dialogs in my *successfully* built and deployed program (on a
smartphone), I get a MissingManifestResourceException at
System.Resources.ResourceManager.InternalGetResourceSet() :-(

So the questions are:

- Short of redoing the project from scratch and cut'n'pasting pieces
of logic from the messed up one, is there any way to cure the
situation? Once again, all of the .cs, and Designer.cs files are under
version control

- Are the resx files supposed be versioned?

- What are other best practices WRT project management for Visual
Studio that could save me some grief in the future?

Thanks in advance,
-- Alexander

date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:26:42 -0700 (PDT)   author:   unknown