The attribute is used by compilers to distinguish between a main assembly and a satellite assembly. A main assembly contains code and the neutral culture's resources. A satellite assembly contains only resources for a particular culture, as in [assembly:AssemblyCultureAttribute("de")]. Putting this attribute on an assembly and using something other than the empty string ("") for the culture name will make this assembly look like a satellite assembly, rather than a main assembly that contains executable code. Labeling a traditional code library with this attribute will break it, because no other code will be able to find the library's entry points at runtime.

For more information, see the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) documentation, especially "Partition II: Metadata Definition and Semantics". The documentation is available online; see tp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=99212 on MSDN and tp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=65552 on the Ecma International Web site.