[fpc-pascal] Placing binary data (resources) in object files?

[Tomas Hajny]

On Mon, June 3, 2013 18:09, Ewald wrote:
> Once upon a time, Anthony Walter said:
>> I am trying to come up with an embedded binary resource system and was
>> considering placing data in object files when I found this question on
>> stack overflow:
>>  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4158900/embedding-resources-in-exe-using-gcc
>>
>>
>> I see that it's possible to directly turn any file into an object file
>> and reference the memory of that as a resource in a C program using:
>>
>> extern char binary_foo_bar_start[];
>> extern char binary_foo_bar_end[];
>>
>> My question, is it possible to link extern char in free pascal in a
>> way similar to above? Perhaps something similar to:
>>
>> var binary_foo_bar_start: pointer; external;
>>
>> {$L foo.bar.o}
>>
>> Or some permutation of the above?
>
> You can pass an option directly to the link ( add -k--format=binary
> -k<binary files you wish to embed> -k--format=default to the fpc command
> line), or you could use objcopy.
>
> These two aproaches aren't very portable though, so it is best you write
> a script or something that generates code that contains this file.
> Something like this:
 .
 .
> PS: Sorry about the php code there; I know it's not the php mailing
> list, but my buildtool happens to be written in php ;-)

Well, you can obviously use tool bin2obj created with/for FPC and
distributed with FPC releases - see fpcsrc/utils/bin2obj.pp.

Tomas