How to set up a Kotlin/Native project so that it places resources alongside the executables? - kotlin

Question

My Kotlin/Native project's target is a windows exe file.
I would like to ship a text file (let's call it resource.txt) together with the exe file, the goal being that in the build dir, I would have a directory with the built exe file plus the resource files ( so that all I'd need to do is copy that directory to e.g. C:\Program Files\MySoftware).
On Android, I would place these types of files in the assets dir and they would get bundled in the APK.
Is there something equivalent for Kotlin/Native?
Basically I would like to place the text file alongside Kotlin code ( e.g. in commonMain/resources)
and then I would like to end up with a build output directory that contains the built exe file as well as the text file.
Is there a standardized way to do this? Or do I need to create my own gradle scripts to bundle my exe + other files?

Answer 1

It's tracked to be supported (either Gradle task, or maybe compiler) but not available yet, so a custom Gradle task it has to be
youtrack

Answer 2

As answered by #Dmitri, it's not implemented yet ( see on youtrack , or an issue on github )
I've solved this with a set of gradle tasks:
package: copies the release binary into a new dir package
packageToZip : makes a zip from the package dir, for convenience.
runPackaged : executes the binary in the package dir, where the required resource files are present.
tasks {
val thePackageTask = register("package", Copy::class) {
group = "package"
description = "Copies the release exe and resources into one directory"
from("$buildDir/processedResources/myprojectname/main") {
include("**/*")
}
from("$buildDir/bin/myprojectname/releaseExecutable") {
include("**/*")
}
into("$buildDir/packaged")
includeEmptyDirs = false
dependsOn("myprojectnameProcessResources")
dependsOn("assemble")
}
val zipTask = register<Zip>("packageToZip") {
group = "package"
description = "Copies the release exe and resources into one ZIP file."
archiveFileName.set("packaged.zip")
destinationDirectory.set(file("$buildDir/packagedZip"))
from("$buildDir/packaged")
dependsOn(thePackageTask)
}
named("build").get().dependsOn(zipTask.get())
val runPackaged = register<Exec>("runPackaged") {
group = "package"
description = "Run the exe file in the \"packaged\" directory."
workingDir = File("$buildDir/packaged")
dependsOn(thePackageTask)
}
}
This could probably be improved so that one doesn't have to hardcode the build directory names, and the project names, but this worked for me ;-)