windres may be used to manipulate Windows resources.
Warning: windres is not always built as part of the binary utilities, since it is only useful for Windows targets.
windres [options] [input-file] [output-file]
windres reads resources from an input file and copies them into an output file. Either file may be in one of three formats:
rcrescoffThe 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.
-i filename--input filenamewindres 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 filenamewindres 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 compatability with rc the option -fo is also accepted, but its use is not recommended.-J format--input-format formatres, rc, or coff. If no input format is specified, windres will guess, as described above.-O format--output-format formatres, rc, or coff. If no output format is specified, windres will guess, as described above.-F target--target target--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. Target Selection.--preprocessor programwindres 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.-I directory--include-dir directoryrc 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 descrived 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]-D option to pass to the preprocessor when reading an rc file.-U target--undefine sym-U option to pass to the preprocessor when reading an rc file.-r-v-l val--language valrc 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--no-use-temp-file-h--help-V--versionwindres.--yydebugwindres is compiled with YYDEBUG defined as 1, this will turn on parser debugging.