C/C++ with GCC: Statically add resource files to executable/library

by

Update I have grown to prefer the control John Ripley’s assembly .incbin based solution offers and now use a variant on that.

I have used objcopy (GNU binutils) to link the binary data from a file foo-data.bin into the data section of the executable:

objcopy -B i386 -I binary -O elf32-i386 foo-data.bin foo-data.o

This gives you a foo-data.o object file which you can link into your executable. The C interface looks something like

/** created from binary via objcopy */
extern uint8_t foo_data[]      asm("_binary_foo_data_bin_start");
extern uint8_t foo_data_size[] asm("_binary_foo_data_bin_size");
extern uint8_t foo_data_end[]  asm("_binary_foo_data_bin_end");

so you can do stuff like

for (uint8_t *byte=foo_data; byte<foo_data_end; ++byte) {
    transmit_single_byte(*byte);
}

or

size_t foo_size = (size_t)((void *)foo_data_size);
void  *foo_copy = malloc(foo_size);
assert(foo_copy);
memcpy(foo_copy, foo_data, foo_size);

If your target architecture has special constraints as to where constant and variable data is stored, or you want to store that data in the .text segment to make it fit into the same memory type as your program code, you can play with the objcopy parameters some more.

More Related Contents:

  1. Compilation fails with “relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.rodata.str1.8′ can not be used when making a shared object”
  2. What does exactly the warning mean about hidden symbol being referenced by DSO?
  3. C++ Dynamic Shared Library on Linux
  4. What are the GCC default include directories?
  5. VS Code will not build c++ programs with multiple .ccp source files
  6. Compiling multithread code with g++
  7. Merge multiple .so shared libraries
  8. Linking a shared library with another shared lib in linux
  9. How to check what shared libraries are loaded at run time for a given process?
  10. Build .so file from .c file using gcc command line
  11. Linking libstdc++ statically: any gotchas?
  12. C++: Safe to use longjmp and setjmp?
  13. How to get a stack trace for C++ using gcc with line number information?
  14. C++ new operator thread safety in linux and gcc 4
  15. Linking g++ 4.8 to libstdc++
  16. Proper way to create unique_ptr that holds an allocated array
  17. How to link using GCC without -l nor hardcoding path for a library that does not follow the libNAME.so naming convention?
  18. Linking problems due to symbols with abi::cxx11?
  19. Cross Platform Floating Point Consistency
  20. What exactly does `-rdynamic` do and when exactly is it needed?
  21. How can a shared library (.so) call a function that is implemented in its loader code?
  22. C++11: How to alias a function? [duplicate]
  23. “relocation R_X86_64_32S against ” linking Error
  24. How can I make GCC compile the .text section as writable in an ELF binary?
  25. Install gcc on linux with no root privilege
  26. version `CXXABI_1.3.8′ not found (required by …) [duplicate]
  27. Default libraries linked in by gcc?
  28. _GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI, GCC 4.8 and ABI compatibility
  29. Undefined reference to process(std::__cxx11::basic_string … ) when compiling affdex linux sample applications
  30. How to assert if a std::mutex is locked?

Leave a Comment