[Bug c/105863] New: RFE: __attribute__((incbin("file"))) or __builtin_incbin("file")

[hpa at zytor dot com]

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");