cppwin32 VS wxWidgets

I would imagine something like https://github.com/microsoft/cppwin32 would maybe be an easier way forward for that?

no, Microsoft has rewritten the windows API in C++ I think https://github.com/microsoft/cppwin32

An official work in progress Windows binding, still far behind of what C# existing bindings are capable of, or legacy toolkits like MFC.

Also given how the team has managed C++/CX transition to C++/WinRT with lesser tooling stuck on C++17, dropped Modern C++ bindings [0][1], before going into other shinny thing, I wonder how long they will keep at it.

[0] - https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/01/21/making...

[1] - https://github.com/microsoft/cppwin32

If you want to use the old tooling, your C++ is going to be very "C with classes," and it's going to use a lot of weird datatypes that don't feel very C++ at all. Microsoft had a project for wrapping the Windows API in idiomatic C++, but appear to have abandoned it. If you choose to go down this road, Charles Petzold's Programming Windows is the book to get. Yes, it's 25 years old, but all the new stuff is just new COM controls (which you can look up in the API documentation)--the fundamentals of making a Windows API program work seriously have not changed.

Even Rust has a native projection of the windows API (which is actually pretty usable). This projection has the same roots as the C++ projection mentioned by u/amnesiac0x07C5. So I don't believe macros are a blocker here.

See : https://github.com/microsoft/cppwin32

Microsoft have recently put decent effort into making the Windows APIs more accessible to C++ users. One of these efforts is called C++/WinRT, and it specifically targets applications intended for "modern" Windows (Windows 8 and later). There's another effort underway at Microsoft for making the older Win32 API more C++-friendly, but it isn't documented nearly as well.

There is a similar project for C++, but it sadly seems to be dead already. The last commit was one year ago.

not that hard to wrap windows.h and undef the annoying stuff, and only a handful of files in your codebase will include it anyway. on the other hand stuff like this looks extremely worse and exactly like the kind of c++ that is hard banned in gamedev codebases

They are, actually, it's linked from the article: https://github.com/microsoft/cppwin32

The Elixir programming language is no stranger to desktop applications as the language actually supports building them out of the box. It uses wxWidgets: a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. But wxWidgets has a very complex API, and doesn’t solve issues that usually come with desktop applications around packaging.

Qt is also 100% open/free. In fact, both are available under the LGPL, just that wxWidgets also grants an exception to not have to distribute application sources even when statically linked:

https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets#licence

But for big programs, ones written in C++? Good luck it won’t be easy at all. You might try wxwidgets or qt. I do not predict trying to click box-ify complex cli tools yielding much success.

In theory, you should be able to use FFI to interface with something like wxWindows, but you might again have problems on macOS, I don't know. And to me eyes, Wx looks a bit outdated.

This seems to be like the classic wxWidgets [1], i.e. it's an API that wraps the underlying platform's default toolkit. So on Windows it uses Windows' native controls, in Linux it seems to use GTK, and so on.

That means that the advantage is being able to write against one API, and get cross-platform compatibility, which can be nice. It also means (typically) being limited in what you can do to the least common denominator, or you (=the toolkit author) end up having to re-implement features from one platform that you want to expose but that are missing on some supported target(s). Or, of course, have an API with non-portable parts in it.

In any case, it means the "look and feel" is not the core feature of the API since that is going to be "like the target platform" and that is the point.

Given the origin, I guess Lua support is important too, here.

[1]: https://www.wxwidgets.org/

- So, I found wxWidgets. Which looked good. However, when I followed some tutorials I was getting errors. Even when I copied and pasted the tutorial code. Furthermore, the library still doesn't seem to simplify the process much.

It is the icon for WXWidgets, a programming toolkit for making user interfaces that work on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

In general, people will use a cross-platform library to port such applications. While QT will likely never really stabilize (I'd flag it unsustainable), the https://www.wxwidgets.org/ is able to be statically linked into commercial and opensource projects at no cost without tripping GPL.

"Hiring a senior C++ developer with GTK experience is costlier"

I think you are confusing skill valuation, and operational productivity. Some have an erroneous notion talent is interchangeable. Likewise, applicants with identical base skill-sets on their CV often mistakenly believe they even have long-term employment options (outsourced, youth tax credit churn, and or senior wage suppression).

Most FOSS people are easier to train, as most already can mitigate utter chaos already. =)

There are a few like that in the C++ community. WxWidgets is the most famous/popular with this approach. But it is a library almost impossible to use in other languages because their api is heavily templated.