Issue 9778 - Support passing resource files to DMD.

[ghost]

http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9778

Note that other compilers like GDC expect the resource file to be compiled to an object file via windres, so .res files are likely only supported by DMD (does LDC support them or does it expect object files too?).

[CyberShadow]

Rather than adding an artificial restriction to rdmd, I think it would be better to allow people to add .res support to the ldmd and gdmd wrappers.

Restricting a feature to one known compiler is akin to the old "This website requires Internet Explorer" checks.

[ghost]

I think once the resource file is compiled to .res it's (almost) too late. windres works on .rc scripts, compiles them to .o and this can then be fed into GCC/GDC/etc. DMD expects the .rc file to be compiled with DM's rcc or VS's rc compiler.

But I've just read that windres can convert .res files link:
windres -i myres.res -o myres.o

So what should we do? I'm thinking either make RDMD try to call windres to convert the file when the compiler isn't DMD, or maybe we should try to wrap the .res argument into another switch that is fed to the compiler script (e.g resource.res -> gdmd -resource=resource.res, so the script can deal with the .res file)?

[CyberShadow]

rdmd shouldn't do anything.

The way things work now is that dmd defines an interface (via the list of command-line arguments it supports), and other compiler vendors provide wrappers (gdmd -> gdc, and ldmd -> ldc) which translate that interface to the switches customary to that compiler tool chain.

If we add things related to the compiler, we will no longer have such a defined interface. Build tools other than rdmd would need to reimplement the same behavior. Therefore, I think the behavior should be implemented in ldmd or gdmd, not rdmd.

[ghost]

But there is no switch for resources in DMD. So what should we do, just pass the .res file to any compiler?

[CyberShadow]

Yes. There is already a convention of doing different things depending on the file extension (e.g. .d / .obj / .lib).

[ghost]

Ok, then the change is much simpler. Updated.

[ghost]

Well I'll just pull this, it's not controversial.