---
name: "elfrc"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "elfrc"
version: "0.7-5"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/elfrc"
---

# elfrc(1)

a resource compiler for ELF systems

## NAME

elfrc — a resource compiler for ELF systems

## SYNOPSIS

**elfrc** \[**-o** *filename\]  \[***-h** *filename\]  \[***-v** *\]*

## DESCRIPTION

*This manual page documents briefly the*  **elfrc** command.

This manual page was written for the **Debian** distribution  because the original program does not have a manual page.

**elfrc** is a program which can  turn arbitrary files into ELF object files which can then be  linked into your program directly and accessed via simple,  user-defined symbol names.

For instance, it's possible to embed even huge (16MB+) files  directly into the executable and then access the data in constant  time without making the compiler or linker eat loads of memory.

## OPTIONS

Here's what the arguments do:

- **-o** *filename*

  Store resulting ELF object in *filename*. If not  given, no ELF object will be generated.

- **-h** *filename*

  Store C header file which can be used to access the resource data in  *filename*. If not given, no header  file will be generated.

- **-v**

  Be a little verbose about what's going on.

In any case, the most important argument is *resfile* - the path  to a resource file which can be parsed by elfrc. If no  resource file is given, or if "-" (a dash) is given, the  resources will be read from the standard input.

A resource file is just a plain text file, each line in the  file describing a resource to be compiled into the ELF output. Each  line is expected to three fields, separated by tab characters: the  type of the resource (can be either 'binary' or 'text'), the symbol  name (this should be a valid C identifier) and the path to the file  to be compiled in.

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Kumar Appaiah akumar@ee.iitm.ac.in for  the **Debian** system (but may be used by others).  Permission is  granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under  the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any   later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public  License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.