How to embed a file into an executable?

Question

I have a small demo executable wrote in C++ that depends only on one 5kb PNG image being loaded before it can run, which is used for a pixel text I made. Because of this on

Answer 1

You can embed any arbitrary file into your program resources: (MSDN) User-Defined Resource.

A user-defined resource-definition statement defines a resource that contains application-specific data. The data can have any format and can be defined either as the content of a given file (if the filename parameter is given) or as a series of numbers and strings (if the raw-data block is specified).

nameID typeID filename

The filename specifies the name of a file containing the binary data of the resource. The contents of the file are included as the resource. RC does not interpret the binary data in any way. It is the programmer's responsibility to ensure that the data is properly aligned for the target computer architecture.

Once you've done that you can use the LoadResource function to access the bytes contained in the file.

Answer 2

A portable way is to define a function like

typedef unsigned char Byte;

Byte const* pngFileData()
{
    static Byte const data =
    {
        // Byte data generated by a helper program.
    };
    return data;
}

Then all you have to do is to write a little helper program that reads the PNG file as binary and generates the C++ curly braces initializer text. Edit: @awoodland has pointed out in comment to the question, that ImageMagick has such a little helper program…

Of course, for a Windows-specific program, instead use the ordinary Windows resource scheme.

Cheers & hth.,

Answer 3

Look at XD:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/xd/

Finally, xd can read a binary file and emit a C language data declaration which contains the data from the file. This is handy when you wish to embed binary data within C programs.

Personally, I'd use resources for windows, but if you require a truly portable way that doesn't involve knowledge of the executable format, this is the way to go. PNG, JPG, whatever...

Answer 4

Base64 encode the file and put it in a string somewhere in your code ;)

Answer 5

On linux I use this. It's based off a few examples I found when trying to do some 4k demos, albeit modified a bit. I believe it can work on windows too, but not with the default VS inline assembly. My workaround is #defining a macro to either use this code or the windows resource system that @MarkRansom suggests (quite painful to get working, but does work eventually).

//USAGE: call BINDATA(name, file.txt) and access the char array &name.

#ifndef EMBED_DATA_H
#define EMBED_DATA_H

#ifdef _WIN32
//#error The VS ASM compiler won't work with this, but you can get external ones to do the trick
#define BINDATA #error BINDATA requires nasm
#else

__asm__(
".altmacro\n" \
".macro binfile p q\n" \
"   .global \\p\n" \
"\\p:\n" \
"   .incbin \\q\n" \
"\\p&_end:\n" \
"   .byte 0\n" \
"   .global \\p&_len\n" \
"\\p&_len:\n" \
"   .int(\\p&_end - \\p)\n" \
".endm\n\t"
);

#ifdef __cplusplus
    extern "C" {
#endif

#define BINDATA(n, s) \
__asm__("\n\n.data\n\tbinfile " #n " \"" #s "\"\n"); \
extern char n; \
extern int n##_len;

#ifdef __cplusplus
    }
#endif

#endif

#endif

Answer 6

This is executable-format dependent, which means inherently operating system/compiler dependent. Windows offers the Resources system for this as mentioned in this question.