User's Guide

Preparing a resource DLL for OS/2

OS/2 icon
This section applies only to VisualAge for OS/2.

To prepare icons for use with VisualAge for OS/2, do the following:

  1. Create an empty C source file. A file like the following will do fine:
    /* empty C file */
    void empty()
    {}
    
  2. Compile the empty source file to create an object file. If you are using the IBM VisualAge for C++ compiler, the following command will work:
    icc /C+ empty.c
    
  3. Create a module definition file for the linker. This example is named userpal.def:
    LIBRARY
    DESCRIPTION 'Icons for user-extended palette'
    DATA NONE
    
  4. Link the object file, using your module definition file, to create an empty DLL. Here is a command that links the files above, to create userpal.dll:
    link386 /NOD empty.obj,userpal.dll,,,userpal.def
    
  5. Create a resource script file. The following file identifies the icons to be included in the DLL, and assigns and identifier to each icon. Here are the contents of an example resource file, named userpal.rc:
    ICON 800 athltcat.ico
    ICON 801 runner.ico
    ICON 802 world.ico
    
  6. Compile your resource script file and merge the compiled resources into your DLL with the following command:
    RC userpal.rc userpal.dll
    

The procedure for building a resource DLL using bitmaps is the same, except that you use lines in the .rc file that look like this:

bitmap 801 runner.bmp

You can include icons and bitmaps in the same DLL.


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