How do I remove unnecessary resources from my proj

Question

I am working with a very big project (a solution that contains 16 projects and each project contains about 100 files).

It is written in C++/C# with Visual Studio 2005.
One of the projects has around 2000 resources out of which only 400 are actually used.
How do I remove those unused resources?

I tried to accomplish the task by searching for used ones.
It worked and I was able to build the solution, but it broke at runtime.

I guess because enums are used. (IMPORTANT)

How can I make sure that it doesn't break at runtime?

EDIT:
I think one method could be to generate the resource (that is not found) on the fly at runtime (somehow).
But I have no idea about ... anything.

NOTE: It's okay if a few unnecessary resources are still there.

Answer 1

I've never had one that bad. My method in compiled programs is to use a REXX script which emulates GREP looking for references to source that I suspect is not being used, remove them from the program and see what breaks. I use the REXX script because I can pre-filter the list of files I want to search. Which allows me to do a search across folders and computers.

Answer 2

You can use third party plug-in for Visual Studio as ReSharper. This add-in will analyze your C# code and point out unused resources. But it only works with C#.

Answer 3

In the Solution Explorer, right click and on a Reference and click on the menu item Find Dependent Code.

If it can't find any dependent code then you can remove this reference from the project. (The Remove operation is also under the right-click menu.)

EDIT: For a large project, the Find Dependent Code operation will take a long time. So since you have 2000 resources and most likely value your time this probably is not a viable option....

Answer 4

In the "Resources View" of the Solution Explorer, right-click and select "Resource Symbols". Now you get a list where you can see which resources constants are used in the .RC-file. This help you might be a bit on the way to cleanup your Resource.h (although it does not show you which resources are not used in the actual C++ code).

Answer 5

If your code contains dynamic loading of resources (e.g. via strings) at runtime, then there is no way to automatically determine which resources can be safely removed from the source. A dynamic loading statement could load any resource.

Your best bet is to start with your trimmed down version of the app, run it, and identify which resources are missing when you test it. Then add them back in and retest.

Answer 6

What I would do is write a custom tool to search your source code.

If you remove a resource ID from a header file (i.e. possibly called resource.h) and then recompile and get no warnings: then that's a good thing.

Here is how I would go about writing the app. Take as input the resource file (resource.h) you want to scrutinize. Open the header file (*.h) and parse all the resource constants (Or at least the onces you are interested in). Store those in a hash table for quick look up later. For each code file in your project, search the text for instances of each of your resource ID's. When a resource ID is used, increment the value in the hash table otherwise leave it at zero. At the end, dump all the resource ID's that are zero out a log file or something. Then test that indeed you can remove those specified resource ID's safely. Once you do that, then write another tool that removes the specified resource ID's given the results of your log file.

You could write such a tool in perl and it would execute in about 0.3 seconds: But would take days to debug. :) Or you could write this in .NET, and it would execute a little slower, but would take you an hour to debug. :)