See the INSTALL file for general installation instructions.

This library is a fixed up version intended to work on modern systems, due to the fact the original hasn't been maintained since 2011 and things have changed since then.

This library is intended to provide an easy to use mechanism for managing (embedding, retrieving, deleting) resources in ELF binaries. The library provides a solid API and ABI that implements the preliminary spec for adding ELF resources (icons or otherwise) documented at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ELFIconSpec Please note that should a backward-incompatible change occur to the API/ABI then the shared library version code will be bumped.

Originally this library was written to use libelf, unfortunately libelf has some issues with reordering data in small executables. Until these issues are resolved please use libbfd (the default backend) or the read-only backend. If you would like to experiment with the libelf backend you can try and set resources on the application "alsamixer", which is a commonly installed application that is known to break.

The read-only backend is a dependency-free backend that is capable of reading libr resources. Support for this backend is thanks to Martin Rosenau. This backend is currently a new edition to libr, however, in the long-run the read-only backend will be the recommended (default) backend for the purpose of most applications. Only a special class of application (primarily elfres) needs to actually add and remove resources in a binary, most applications need only read resources already added by elfres.

1. Install dependencies:

sudo apt-get install build-essential autotools-dev libtool pkg-config doxygen
sudo apt-get install libgtk-2.0-dev libglade2-dev binutils-dev libglib2.0-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev librsvg2-dev gettext

2. Clone libr and gnome-elf-thumbnailer in the same directory:

git clone https://github.com/pi-apps-go/libr
git clone https://github.com/pi-apps-go/gnome-elf-thumbnailer

3. Compile the build:

cd libr
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc

You should see now built binaries and packaged in .deb format under debian-build.

You may choose to distribute your modifications to this variant of the library under the LGPL v3, in accordance with Section 5 of that license. Should you wish to excise libbfd from this library you may choose to remove libr_bfd.h and libr_bfd.c and compile against libelf instead, the backend may be selected at configure time: ./configure --libr-backend=libelf

I consider the ability to select the library backend as satisfying the LGPL v3 Section 5a requirement and this notice (and the notice contained within libr_bfd.c) to satisfy the Section 5b requirement.