File resource compiler (fresco)

The file resource compiler (fresco) is a simple command line tool used for parsing resource files into c++ source file defined byte arrays. Fresco generates one source(.cpp) file and one header(.h) file. These generated files can then be included in any c++ project. This program aims to be a simple solution for compiling static resources into a c++ executable.

Example

# fresco in /usr/local/bin
.
├── example
│    ├── encryption_keys.txt
│    ├── firmware_rev2a.bin
│    └── log.config

The following command compiles the above resources into a resource.h file and resource.cpp file. The name of the output files is designated by the -n flag. The -d indicates the output directory to be the current directory. Lastly, the -f flag takes an arbitrary number of key values arguments. Each pair is comprises a string ID (left) and a file path (right). The data for each file can be accessed through the header files interface using the defined string ID.

cd example 
fresco -n resource -d . -f firmware firmware_rev2a.bin logConfig log.config keys encryption_keys.txt

The following is a simple hello world example. The code below shows how to access one of the resources compiled using the command above in a C++ project. The initResources() function must be called before any resources can be accessed. This allocates the heap memory to store the resource data. The resource data will remain in memory until freeResources() is called. Resource data can be accessed using getResourceData(). The string ID passed into the command line tool is what is used to access each data resource.

#include "resource.h"

int main()
{
    Fresco::initResources(); 
    
    Fresco::ResourceData data = Fresco::getResourceData("firmware");
    for (int i = 0; i < data.dataLength; i++)
    {
        data.data[i]; // Do something with the data 
    }
    
    Fresco::freeResources();
    
    return 0;
}

Build Instructions

Build rhc requires the commonpp utilities library. The following commands will allow you to build fresco.

git clone https://github.com/patrickTumulty/fresco.git
cd fresco/libs
git clone https://github.com/patrickTumulty/commonpp.git # Git clone commonpp utilities library 
cd ..
./build.sh