How to embed a file into an executable?

Question

I have a small demo executable wrote in C++ that depends only on one 5kb PNG image being loaded before it can run, which is used for a pixel text I made. Because of this on

Answer 1

On linux I use this. It's based off a few examples I found when trying to do some 4k demos, albeit modified a bit. I believe it can work on windows too, but not with the default VS inline assembly. My workaround is #defining a macro to either use this code or the windows resource system that @MarkRansom suggests (quite painful to get working, but does work eventually).

//USAGE: call BINDATA(name, file.txt) and access the char array &name.

#ifndef EMBED_DATA_H
#define EMBED_DATA_H

#ifdef _WIN32
//#error The VS ASM compiler won't work with this, but you can get external ones to do the trick
#define BINDATA #error BINDATA requires nasm
#else

__asm__(
".altmacro\n" \
".macro binfile p q\n" \
"   .global \\p\n" \
"\\p:\n" \
"   .incbin \\q\n" \
"\\p&_end:\n" \
"   .byte 0\n" \
"   .global \\p&_len\n" \
"\\p&_len:\n" \
"   .int(\\p&_end - \\p)\n" \
".endm\n\t"
);

#ifdef __cplusplus
    extern "C" {
#endif

#define BINDATA(n, s) \
__asm__("\n\n.data\n\tbinfile " #n " \"" #s "\"\n"); \
extern char n; \
extern int n##_len;

#ifdef __cplusplus
    }
#endif

#endif

#endif