如何使用C＃以编程方式将内容添加到新的/现有的可执行文件中，并可能使解决方案在Mac上运行？

Question

I've seen a number of variations on this question and im not sure if this question has been completely duplicated.

I would like to be able to at run-time run an existing executable (SOURCE exe) and have it: 1) take an existing TARGET exe at run time and add content of any size and type to the TARGET exe (pdf, image, word, excel file type, etc) 2) be able to run the modified TARGET exe so that when the TARGET exe is run, it will find the embedded content inside of itself and copy the content to the hard drive and then run the program associated with the content (foe example, run excel on a copied xls file)

I've seen examples where you embed resources at compile time in visual studio but I want to do this at run-time in code (c#, java, whatever works). Either the host TARGET exe needs to already exist and content should be added to it OR the exe will need to be generated from scratch at run-time and content again added to it.

I also would prefer not to use any of the cmd-line tools that visual studio or any other tool would run behind the scenes (if possible) to create an exe to minimize the enduser needing to download any more libraries/sdks than necessary.

This product is in line with what i want to do http://www.boomeranglistbuilder.com/instructions/usingsoftware.php

(I want to improve upon it) :)

Lastly it'd be great if the solution could be cross platform compatible (doubt it though) Could this be done in java?

I've seen the window library resource method updateresource method mentioned in my searches but I'm not sure if that would completely fit my situation. can anyone comment?

I hope my question is clear. Please let me know.

Any help would be graciously appreciated.

Thank you,

Carlos

Answer 1

I think that it's true for most binary file formats (including the executables), appending data to a well-formed file will not affect the usage of the file, the way it is typically interpreted by most programs. You could, maybe, take advantage of this.

To embed, you'll need to take your (existing) target executable and simply append some binary data to it. That data will have two parts:

1. A magic word (to denote the presence of an appended resource)
2. The resource itself.

So, this:

[target executable data]

Becomes this:

[target executable data]
[magic word]
[resource]

To read the resource from the target executable, simply have that executable open itself, search for the magic word and, if it's present, start reading the resource appended after it.

This is what WinRAR does (or at least did four years ago, when I last checked) to recognize the archives inside of its self-extracting files.