win32metadata VS EA Standard Template Library

As /u/huellenoperator notes, that this needs a pointer to a mutable string comes straight from microsoft through win32metadata. Maybe it's a mistake on Microsoft's side, but if it's not you're taking big risks.

Microsoft offers official "bindings" to Win32 APIs through win32metadata. However, until recently, it did not include metadata for kernel-level functions or WDK. In early 2021, an issue was raised through windows-rs regarding this limitation, but progress was slow until now. Microsoft has finally released official metadata for WDK, which can be found on the wdkmetadata repository. The latest comment on the issue thread can be found here:

for win32metadata's kernel api tracking issue, https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata/issues/401

Any examples? Since the API bindings in windows-sys are generated from the metadata generated from official Windows SDK headers I'd not expect to see this kind of difference.

You might also look at this project: https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata

There is still the occasional incredibly subtle link time fuckery in Rust.

https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata/issues/1274

"Minor" semver updates to crates breaking things via e.g. unexpected MSRV bumps is pretty common too, with some resulting bitrot. That said, I agree with you that things in Rust are at least better. Imperfect, but better.

Win32 is available as metadata to enable adoption in as many languages as possible. Are there some things missing? Yes. The Microsoft team acknowledges that and encourages asking for the things you need so they can add them to the metadata.

It might be interesting to have bindings generated for the entirety of Win32 API through https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata

Hi JB! Funny to cross paths with you in this context. I don't know if you remember me but I was a rookie programmer who got the pleasure of joining the VideoLan Conference in Dublin back in 2014, and then Paris the next year, and you were very kind to me.

The GitHub issue title here is unfortunately misleading. I have renamed it to "ideas to improve windows header files and libc". Also, I hope it is clear that I rebutted the points made by the OP, because I completely agree with your summary that the mingw-w64 people are skilled, nice and very clever and think about all use cases.

If any drive-by HN readers work at Microsoft, please help us with this issue: https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata/issues/766

> you can still use it with smart pointers provided by any other library

Is the point of having a kitchen-sink library like this not that you dont have to reach for a 3rdparty library for things that you need 'all the time'?

Certainly, not everyone needs it.

...but, not everyone needs threads either. Not everyone needs an http server; and yet, if you have an application framework that provides them, when you do need them, it saves you reaching for yet-another-dependency.

Was that no the point from the beginning?

unique_ptr is a fundamental primitive for many, as you see from some other frameworks (1), and implementation is not always either a) trivial, or b) as simple as 'just use std::unique_ptr'.

This does seem like a very opinionated decision with reasonably unclear justification.

[1] - eg. https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/blob/release/Engin..., https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL/blob/master/include/...

Can I introduce you to EASTL

For games focused stuff have a look at EASTL https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL also perhaps some of the Data Oriented Design stuff (see Mike Acton's CPP Con Talks). This also have loads of good stuff https://www.dataorienteddesign.com/dodbook/

C++, but generally treat it as C. STL is pretty slow while debugging so we avoid it and write our own replacements. If you don't want to drive that deep use something like EASTL: https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL

In my experience game devs don't eschew the STL because of compile times, but because (a) its memory management is not sufficiently tunable and (b) it uses exceptions heavily which many game engines disable entirely due to perceived performance problems. For this reason, some of the engines I've worked on have used their own forks of the STL in the spirit of EASTL to rectify these issues. Others like my current project just don't use the STL at all (outside of some third-party library code) and use custom libraries for everything.

In my opinion, you should also benchmark it against something like boost::container::flat_set or eastl::vector_set and you should expect the same performance as with your ordered functionality. Another interesting idea for organization of such flat and sorted container can be found here.

finally, if you're worried about performance (a lot of aspiring game programmers seem to be, even though for anything but high-end engines the STL is likely fine if you know what you're doing..) you could look into the EA STL or other STL replacements..

check it out: https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL

I just took a look at their atomic.h and wow, "well-documented" is an understatement !