tcl VS cppwin32

Behold, a 16MB "Go" file: https://gitlab.com/cznic/tcl/-/blob/master/lib/tcl_windows_amd64.go

Based upon info in an AUTHORS file [0] for a different project by the user cznic, I think there is indeed some kind of connection with nic.cz

But I believe, based upon my membership on the GoNuts group / mailing list, that this is mostly the work of one individual, Jan Mercl (he is quite active in GoNuts) — as also stated in the previously mentioned AUTHORS file, and in the AUTHORS file for the port of Tcl that is the subject of the OP [1].

I have used some of his non-transpiled code/projects in my own Go projects in the past. He seems to be a very solid coder, often happy to share his views in GoNuts, and also frequently reviews others' code too.

[0] https://github.com/cznic/golex/blob/master/AUTHORS

[1] https://gitlab.com/cznic/tcl/-/blob/master/AUTHORS

I think the author of modernc.org/sqlite also ported the test suite. They wrote https://gitlab.com/cznic/tcl to run the TCL-based tests, for example.

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