Resource compiling in Linux

[Kurt]

It appears that the Ubuntu/Mint/Debian distributions of Lazarus/FPC don't include Windres.  It also is missing from the official Lazarus/FPC binaries for Linux.  What are people using for resource compiling in Linux?

[Jonas Maebe]

It's not included in the Linux distributions of FPC/Lazarus for the same reason that those distributions don't include gdb, as or ld: they rely on you installing the OS-versions of those tools if you need them/want to use them.

windres is available on Ubuntu 16 in e.g. the package binutils-mingw-w64-i686, as i686-w64-mingw32-windres. In general, it should be available in any distribution as part part of their win32/win64 cross binutils package.

[Kurt]

Are the maintainers of the Ubuntu Lazarus/FPC packages part of the Lazarus/FPC team?  Who would I talk to about getting the windres packages part of the dependencies for Lazarus?

[Jonas Maebe]

I guess you can file a bug report with Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lazarus/+filebug

[SymbolicFrank]

Resource compiling is a very Windows-centric thing.

[Cyrax]

Resource compiling is a very Windows-centric thing.

With (recent) FPC you can use windows style resources everywhere if target supports COFF (Windows) or ELF (Linux, Unix etc.) style object files.

[Thaddy]

I have a rudimentary resource compiler - not complete, but working - for windows rc files that should compile into res cross-platform. I will see if I can release it, but it needs clean-up and a check for proprietary code..
It does not support the curly bracket format and never will, but I think it can be useful.

[Graeme]

@Thaddy: That would be awesome! Hopefully one day a cross-platform resource compiler could be included with FPC as standard too.

[Thaddy]

I will work on it and post you a private message where to get the mess later this week or early next week.
There are some proprietary issues, but nothing unsolvable. Don't expect too much... it does just what we needed, but it's a start.