https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=105863
Bug ID: 105863
Summary: RFE: __attribute__((incbin("file"))) or
__builtin_incbin("file")
Product: gcc
Version: unknown
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: P3
Component: c
Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org
Reporter: hpa at zytor dot com
Target Milestone: ---
It is a *very* common operation to want to include a preexisting binary object
into a compiled project. There are a number of ways to do this, but they all
suffer significant shortcomings.
The most common ways are to use a preprocessor to convert the input binary
object to textual source, or to wrap an object in assembly code and use
.incbin. The former is *extremely* inefficient, the latter has a number of
pitfalls, including the one described in bug 66871, the need for
platform-specific coding, sizeof() not being functional, etc.
I would like to suggest a variable attribute __attribute__((incbin("file")))
which statically initializes a variable to the contents of the given binary
file, or a __builtin_incbin("file") which would expand to an initializer; the
end result would look either like:
char foobar[] __attribute__((incbin("foobar.bin")));
char foobar[] = __builtin_incbin("foobar.bin");
