Recipe for creating Windows ICO files with ImageMagick?

I would like to create .ico icon for my Windows application dynamically (from the SVG file) by using ImageMagick. How do I do that?

Microsoft lists various color depth and size requirements for the icon. ImageMagick has the -depth and -colors options, but I'm not sure how to use them correctly in this case.

Additionaly, it looks like Vista+ supports 256x256 hi-res icon embedded into the very same .ico which can (should? must?) be a compressed PNG. How do I "join" the Windows XP icons and this new Vista icon into a single .ico file?

Solution

ImageMagick has a recipe for this in their documentation, see FavIcon Web Page Link Thumbnail

Essentially you run the following:

convert image.png  -bordercolor white -border 0 \
          \( -clone 0 -resize 16x16 \) \
          \( -clone 0 -resize 32x32 \) \
          \( -clone 0 -resize 48x48 \) \
          \( -clone 0 -resize 64x64 \) \
          -delete 0 -alpha off -colors 256 favicon.ico

You can modify this to include larger resolutions as necessary and to change things like border, transparency settings etc.