elfrc

Elfrc project is a software program designed to convert arbitrary files into ELF object files, allowing direct linking to a program and easy access through user-defined symbol names. The program is available under the BSD license, and information on usage and details can be found in the software package's LICENSE file.

To compile the program, the only non-trivial dependency elfrc has are some ELF header files. Other than that, the program should build out-of-the-box on any system which uses ELF files. Any C compiler and the standard header files will suffice. Simply run 'make' (GNU make works, as does FreeBSD make) to build the program.

The usage line for elfrc is shown when it is invoked without any arguments: elfrc [-o ] [-h ] [-v] [resfile]. The arguments dictate how the resulting ELF object and C header files are saved and whether or not to provide verbose output. The most important argument is the path to the resource file which elfrc will parse to extract the necessary data.

A resource file is a plain text file containing lines that describe each resource to be compiled into the ELF output. Each line must have three fields separated by tab characters: the type of the resource (binary or text), the symbol name (a valid C identifier), and the path to the file to be compiled in.

A sample resource file is provided as an example, which can be used with elfrc to compile resources into an object file. If you intend to link the object file into a C or C++ program, you will want to generate a corresponding header file as well. This will allow for easy access to the data.

The resulting header file will contain information about the included resources and symbol names. The generated header file is automatically created by elfrc and should not be modified by hand.