The Resource ID Organiser (ResOrg for short) is an Add-in for Visual C++ designed to help overcome one of the most annoying (and unnecessary) chores of developing/maintaining Windows applications - maintaining resource symbol ID values.

A typical Visual C++ project will contain at least resource (.RC) file. Associated with each is a symbol definition file (named "resource.h" by default) which contains #define directives for each of the symbols used in the project.

Resource symbol definitions are created and modified by the Visual C++ resource editor when the resources for a project are edited. Unfortunately, when it does so it often gets it wrong. How often have you seen this message box whilst editing a dialog:

...even when the symbol names are different? This happens because two symbols with the same value are used in  the same dialog template, and usually arises as a direct result of the way the resource editor allocates symbols.

The problem is that the editor is not particularly intelligent in the way it allocates symbol ID values - and does not provide any facilities to unravel the mess that can all too easily arise as a result. The end result can be a  large number of conflicting resource symbol values or even unpredictable behaviour at runtime.

Enter the Resource ID Organiser

ResOrg came about as a result of the sheer frustration of repeatedly renumbering resource symbols in a large multi-module project (75 modules, and over 3000 symbols) by hand or by using Excel. Surprisingly, there aren't any other tools to perform this seemingly straightforward task, though there is a macro on CodeGuru which does something similar - see the article (Sequentially Renumber Resource IDs).

ResOrg facilities to manage resource symbols at file, module and solution level:

There are actually two versions of ResOrg. As well as add-ins for Visual C++ 5.0/6.0 and .NET, a standalone application is available which has the same functionality. All versions are capable of reading Visual C++ solutions and offer equivalent functionality.

Features

ResOrg offers many features to help make managing resource symbol files easier, of which the following are a small selection:

• Easy to interpret displays of the symbols within resource files.
   
• Detection of out of range and conflicting symbols, both within and between resource symbol files.
   
• Detection and correction of incorrect "Next Symbol" values.
   
• Customisable HTML reports.
   
• Manual and automated symbol renumbering.
   
• Automatic exclusion of specified symbols (such as IDR_MAINFRAME) from renumbering operations
   
•  Available as both a Visual C++ add-in and a standalone application.
   
• Compatible with Visual C++ 5.0, 6.0, .NET 2002, 2003 and 2005.

More information on ResOrg features