Residents

Residents are precompiled files which are loaded when the compiler starts. They can be found in the 'residents' folder of the PureBasic installation path. A resident file must have the extension '.res' and can contain the following items: structures, interfaces, macros and constants. It can not contain dynamic code or procedures.

When a resident is loaded, all its content is available for the program being compiled. That's why all built-in constants like #PB_Event_CloseWindow are available, they are in the 'PureBasic.res' file. All the API structures and constants are also in a resident file. Using residents is a good way to store the common macros, structure and constants so they will be available for every programs. When distributing an user library, it's also a nice solution to provide the needed constants and structures, as PureBasic does.

To create a new resident, the command-line compiler needs to be used, as there is no option to do it from the IDE. It is often needed to use /IGNORERESIDENT and /CREATERESIDENT at the same time to avoid duplicate errors, as the previous version of the resident is loaded before creating the new one.

Residents greatly help to have a faster compilation and compiler start, as all the information is stored in binary format. It is much faster to load than parsing an include file at every compilation.