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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT | COLOPHON |
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WINDRES(1) GNU Development Tools WINDRES(1)
windres - manipulate Windows resources
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:
"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.
-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. The default preprocessor is "gcc".
--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. If the
--preprocessor option has not been specified then a default
set of preprocessor arguments will be used, with any
--preprocessor-arg options being placed after them on the
command line. These default arguments are "-E", "-xc-header"
and "-DRC_INVOKED".
-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.
the Info entries for binutils.
Copyright (c) 1991-2025 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".
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-with-
gold-2.44.tar.gz fetched from ⟨https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/⟩
on 2025-08-11. 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-2.44 2025-08-11 WINDRES(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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