A long time ago, Lars Fosdal wrote this on the Delphi G+ group:
It really is beyond me why there is no Project.rc file which includes
Project.version.rc
Project.icon.rc
Project.themes.rc
Project.manifest.xml
and so forth.
That way, the .res file would be a compile-time thing (or even a thing of the past) – and the resource linker would assemble the various bits from their individual sources.
It has been an issue forever. Vincent Parrett correctly commented that if you clean out too much out of the Project.res file, the IDE gets confused:
The only thing it is used for is version info and the mainicon (the IDE gets confused if don’t do that).
Like many of the G+ commenters, I’ve switched to script based resources for my own projects a long time ago. That’s also the reason why I forgot: this approach just works for any Delphi version.
This post is a reminder to self to see if the IDE has finally refrained from doing Project.res handling itself.
The last is by Dave Robinson, then working at Amber Computer Systems Inc, but I could not find on-line activity of him If you know him, please let me know his on-line contact info.