CsWin32 VS winforms

Compare CsWin32 vs winforms and see what are their differences.

CsWin32

A source generator to add a user-defined set of Win32 P/Invoke methods and supporting types to a C# project. (by microsoft)

winforms

Windows Forms is a .NET UI framework for building Windows desktop applications. (by dotnet)
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CsWin32 winforms
23 25
1,830 4,183
8.1% 1.6%
9.4 9.3
8 days ago 7 days ago
C# C#
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

CsWin32

Posts with mentions or reviews of CsWin32. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-18.

winforms

Posts with mentions or reviews of winforms. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-18.
  • Duda carrera: C#/.NET vs. Node/Express
    13 projects | /r/devsarg | 18 May 2023
    Winforms: Licencia MIT.
  • When A .NET Developer Learns Blazor
    5 projects | /r/csharp | 15 Mar 2023
    No, it is fully supported and in active development. https://github.com/dotnet/winforms
  • WPF Roadmap 2023
    3 projects | /r/dotnet | 21 Feb 2023
    No, it's still under active development/maintenance. https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/graphs/contributors
  • Why is Microsoft's C# not taught in most universities and Java is instead?
    6 projects | /r/microsoft | 15 Sep 2022
    Also, the runtime that C# runs on, is also completely open source as well (https://github.com/dotnet/runtime); ASP.NET which is used to create web apps in C# is open as well (https://github.com/dotnet/aspnetcore). WinForms/WPF, used to make desktop apps in C# is also open source (https://github.com/dotnet/wpf, https://github.com/dotnet/winforms). All of the source code for these are on the dotnet Github page: https://github.com/dotnet and most are all MIT-licensed.
  • Announcing .NET 7 Preview 5
    3 projects | /r/csharp | 14 Jun 2022
    WinForms is still often used for business, lab and industrial applications. It is the most straightforward way to make a Windows desktop application in C# if your application doesn't have many screens and doesn't require customized looks. It is very close to native Windows UI components. The WinForms Github is also very much alive, I daresay it is better maintained than the WPF Github. https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/pulse
    3 projects | /r/csharp | 14 Jun 2022
    You'll likely have to open an issue against https://github.com/dotnet/winforms. If you've already opened an issue here, then feel free to link and I might be able to provide suggestions on how to improve the triage process.
  • Win32 is the stable Linux userland ABI (and the consequences)
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Feb 2022
    There's been a lot of work happening to make WinForms trimmable. I think it will land in the upcoming .NET release (7) or the next one, I'm looking forward to being able to ship small WinForms apps with zero dependencies. https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/issues/4649
  • Transitioning from learning algorithms to actual developement.
    3 projects | /r/learnprogramming | 23 Feb 2022
    Here are some examples (https://github.com/python/cpython) (https://github.com/dotnet/winforms) (https://github.com/microsoft/vscode)
  • .NET 6 Preview 5
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Jun 2021
  • "Did you know...?" infographics - #2 skipping initialization
    4 projects | /r/csharp | 4 May 2021
    Yes, but not only. It is a trick used for creating union types for structs - `Unsafe.SkipInit(out this);` satisfies compiler to not initialize all fields: https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/blob/d46ad2e8dc76248739d9ae22b28b399a6a6b299e/src/System.Windows.Forms.Primitives/src/Interop/Interop.ARGB.cs

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CsWin32 and winforms you can also consider the following projects:

Avalonia - Develop Desktop, Embedded, Mobile and WebAssembly apps with C# and XAML. The most popular .NET Foundation community project.

Introducing .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI) - .NET MAUI is the .NET Multi-platform App UI, a framework for building native device applications spanning mobile, tablet, and desktop.

ClangSharp - Clang bindings for .NET written in C#

Xamarin.Forms - Xamarin.Forms Official Home

SRWE - Simple Runtime Window Editor

Vanara - A set of .NET libraries for Windows implementing PInvoke calls to many native Windows APIs with supporting wrappers.

Visual Studio Code - Visual Studio Code

pinvoke - A library containing all P/Invoke code so you don't have to import it every time. Maintained and updated to support the latest Windows OS.

terrafx.interop.windows - Interop bindings for Windows.

cheat-engine - Cheat Engine. A development environment focused on modding

Unity-WinForms - A Windows Forms port for Unity3d

cppcomponents - Allows you to write binary components in C++11 that can be used across different compilers and standard libraries