NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT | COLOPHON

WINDRES(1)                  GNU Development Tools                 WINDRES(1)

NAME         top

       windres - manipulate Windows resources.

SYNOPSIS         top

       windres [options] [input-file] [output-file]

DESCRIPTION         top

       windres reads resources from an input file and copies them into an
       output file.  Either file may be in one of three formats:
       "rc"
           A text format read by the Resource Compiler.
       "res"
           A binary format generated by the Resource Compiler.
       "coff"
           A COFF object or executable.
       The exact description of these different formats is available in
       documentation from Microsoft.
       When windres converts from the "rc" format to the "res" format, it is
       acting like the Windows Resource Compiler.  When windres converts
       from the "res" format to the "coff" format, it is acting like the
       Windows "CVTRES" program.
       When windres generates an "rc" file, the output is similar but not
       identical to the format expected for the input.  When an input "rc"
       file refers to an external filename, an output "rc" file will instead
       include the file contents.
       If the input or output format is not specified, windres will guess
       based on the file name, or, for the input file, the file contents.  A
       file with an extension of .rc will be treated as an "rc" file, a file
       with an extension of .res will be treated as a "res" file, and a file
       with an extension of .o or .exe will be treated as a "coff" file.
       If no output file is specified, windres will print the resources in
       "rc" format to standard output.
       The normal use is for you to write an "rc" file, use windres to
       convert it to a COFF object file, and then link the COFF file into
       your application.  This will make the resources described in the "rc"
       file available to Windows.

OPTIONS         top

       -i filename
       --input filename
           The name of the input file.  If this option is not used, then
           windres will use the first non-option argument as the input file
           name.  If there are no non-option arguments, then windres will
           read from standard input.  windres can not read a COFF file from
           standard input.
       -o filename
       --output filename
           The name of the output file.  If this option is not used, then
           windres will use the first non-option argument, after any used
           for the input file name, as the output file name.  If there is no
           non-option argument, then windres will write to standard output.
           windres can not write a COFF file to standard output.  Note, for
           compatibility with rc the option -fo is also accepted, but its
           use is not recommended.
       -J format
       --input-format format
           The input format to read.  format may be res, rc, or coff.  If no
           input format is specified, windres will guess, as described
           above.
       -O format
       --output-format format
           The output format to generate.  format may be res, rc, or coff.
           If no output format is specified, windres will guess, as
           described above.
       -F target
       --target target
           Specify the BFD format to use for a COFF file as input or output.
           This is a BFD target name; you can use the --help option to see a
           list of supported targets.  Normally windres will use the default
           format, which is the first one listed by the --help option.
       --preprocessor program
           When windres reads an "rc" file, it runs it through the C
           preprocessor first.  This option may be used to specify the
           preprocessor to use, including any leading arguments.  The
           default preprocessor argument is "gcc -E -xc-header
           -DRC_INVOKED".
       --preprocessor-arg option
           When windres reads an "rc" file, it runs it through the C
           preprocessor first.  This option may be used to specify
           additional text to be passed to preprocessor on its command line.
           This option can be used multiple times to add multiple options to
           the preprocessor command line.
       -I directory
       --include-dir directory
           Specify an include directory to use when reading an "rc" file.
           windres will pass this to the preprocessor as an -I option.
           windres will also search this directory when looking for files
           named in the "rc" file.  If the argument passed to this command
           matches any of the supported formats (as described in the -J
           option), it will issue a deprecation warning, and behave just
           like the -J option.  New programs should not use this behaviour.
           If a directory happens to match a format, simple prefix it with
           ./ to disable the backward compatibility.
       -D target
       --define sym[=val]
           Specify a -D option to pass to the preprocessor when reading an
           "rc" file.
       -U target
       --undefine sym
           Specify a -U option to pass to the preprocessor when reading an
           "rc" file.
       -r  Ignored for compatibility with rc.
       -v  Enable verbose mode.  This tells you what the preprocessor is if
           you didn't specify one.
       -c val
       --codepage val
           Specify the default codepage to use when reading an "rc" file.
           val should be a hexadecimal prefixed by 0x or decimal codepage
           code. The valid range is from zero up to 0xffff, but the validity
           of the codepage is host and configuration dependent.
       -l val
       --language val
           Specify the default language to use when reading an "rc" file.
           val should be a hexadecimal language code.  The low eight bits
           are the language, and the high eight bits are the sublanguage.
       --use-temp-file
           Use a temporary file to instead of using popen to read the output
           of the preprocessor. Use this option if the popen implementation
           is buggy on the host (eg., certain non-English language versions
           of Windows 95 and Windows 98 are known to have buggy popen where
           the output will instead go the console).
       --no-use-temp-file
           Use popen, not a temporary file, to read the output of the
           preprocessor.  This is the default behaviour.
       -h
       --help
           Prints a usage summary.
       -V
       --version
           Prints the version number for windres.
       --yydebug
           If windres is compiled with "YYDEBUG" defined as 1, this will
           turn on parser debugging.
       @file
           Read command-line options from file.  The options read are
           inserted in place of the original @file option.  If file does not
           exist, or cannot be read, then the option will be treated
           literally, and not removed.
           Options in file are separated by whitespace.  A whitespace
           character may be included in an option by surrounding the entire
           option in either single or double quotes.  Any character
           (including a backslash) may be included by prefixing the
           character to be included with a backslash.  The file may itself
           contain additional @file options; any such options will be
           processed recursively.

SEE ALSO         top

       the Info entries for binutils.

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright (c) 1991-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
       under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
       any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
       Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
       Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
       "GNU Free Documentation License".

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the binutils (a collection of tools for working
       with executable binaries) project.  Information about the project can
       be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, see 
       ⟨http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=binutils⟩.  This
       page was obtained from the tarball binutils-2.28.tar.gz fetched from
       ⟨https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
       you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
binutils-2.28                    2017-03-02                       WINDRES(1)