win32metadata VS imgui

Compare win32metadata vs imgui and see what are their differences.

win32metadata

Tooling to generate metadata for Win32 APIs in the Windows SDK. (by microsoft)

imgui

Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies (by ocornut)
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win32metadata imgui
27 351
1,280 55,570
1.3% -
0.0 9.7
11 days ago 7 days ago
C++ C++
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later 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.

win32metadata

Posts with mentions or reviews of win32metadata. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-02.
  • Hey Rustaceans! Got a question? Ask here (18/2023)!
    5 projects | /r/rust | 2 May 2023
    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.
  • Kernel Headers for Windows could soon make it into windows-rs
    5 projects | /r/rust | 22 Feb 2023
    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:
  • winreader: read memory from other programs
    3 projects | /r/rust | 2 Feb 2023
    for win32metadata's kernel api tracking issue, https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata/issues/401
  • Best windows stubs
    2 projects | /r/rust | 27 Jan 2023
    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.
  • can we be free of c?
    1 project | /r/ProgrammingLanguages | 18 Nov 2022
    You might also look at this project: https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata
  • Is it time to retire C and C++ for Rust in new programs?
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Sep 2022
    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.

  • Are there any Windows-centric perks of using C# that other non-Microsoft languages simply can't offer (or at least don't out of the box)?
    1 project | /r/AskProgramming | 7 Aug 2022
    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.
  • Using Windows API in Julia?
    3 projects | /r/Julia | 1 Feb 2022
    It might be interesting to have bindings generated for the entirety of Win32 API through https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata
  • Would std code for Windows ever use the windows crate by Microsoft?
    6 projects | /r/rust | 22 Dec 2021
  • The Atrocities of COM win32 headers
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Dec 2021
    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

imgui

Posts with mentions or reviews of imgui. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-06.
  • Using raylib with Dear ImGui: Game Dev Debugging UI
    5 projects | dev.to | 6 Apr 2024
    include(cmake/CPM.cmake) function(raylib_imgui_setup_dependencies) message(STATUS "Include Dear ImGui") FetchContent_Declare( ImGui GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/ocornut/imgui GIT_TAG 277ae93c41314ba5f4c7444f37c4319cdf07e8cf) # v1.90.4 FetchContent_MakeAvailable(ImGui) FetchContent_GetProperties(ImGui SOURCE_DIR IMGUI_DIR) add_library( imgui STATIC ${imgui_SOURCE_DIR}/imgui.cpp ${imgui_SOURCE_DIR}/imgui_draw.cpp ${imgui_SOURCE_DIR}/imgui_widgets.cpp ${imgui_SOURCE_DIR}/imgui_tables.cpp) target_include_directories(imgui INTERFACE ${imgui_SOURCE_DIR}) include(cmake/CPM.cmake) message(STATUS "Include dbg-macro") cpmaddpackage( "gh:sharkdp/dbg-macro#fb9976f410f8b29105818b20278cd0be0e853fe8" )# v0.5.1 message(STATUS "Include fmtlib") cpmaddpackage("gh:fmtlib/fmt#e69e5f977d458f2650bb346dadf2ad30c5320281" )# 10.x message(STATUS "Include raylib") cpmaddpackage("gh:raysan5/raylib#ae50bfa2cc569c0f8d5bc4315d39db64005b1b0" )# v5.0 message(STATUS "Include spdlog") cpmaddpackage("gh:gabime/spdlog#7c02e204c92545f869e2f04edaab1f19fe8b19fd" )# v1.13.0 message(STATUS "Include rlImGui") FetchContent_Declare( rlImGui GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/raylib-extras/rlImGui GIT_TAG d765c1ef3d37cf939f88aaa272a59a2713d654c9) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(rlImGui) FetchContent_GetProperties(rlImGui SOURCE_DIR RLIMGUI_DIR) add_library(rlimgui STATIC ${rlimgui_SOURCE_DIR}/rlImgui.cpp) target_link_libraries(rlimgui PRIVATE imgui raylib) target_include_directories(rlimgui INTERFACE ${rlimgui_SOURCE_DIR}) endfunction()
  • Ask HN: Fastest cross-platform GUI stack/strategy
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Mar 2024
  • Immediate Mode GUI Programming
    15 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Jan 2024
    Immediate mode is a fuzzy concept, as witnessed by this writeup: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/About-the-IMGUI-paradi...
  • Nebula is an open-source and free-to-use modern C++ game engine
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Jan 2024
  • Black Triangles
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Dec 2023
    It's fun to see the evolution in e.g. these examples of image loading for Dear Imgui:

    https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Image-Loading-and-Disp...

    DirectX9 will even load the image for you, DirectX11 okay we get a few more structures to fill out, DirectX12 is where it goes off the rails and we are filling out a bunch of UNKNOWN DONT_CARE JUST_DO_IT. Then of course Vulkan is the one that gets the big fat "this probably won't actually work for you" warning.

    I understand whats happening, but you know sometimes I just want to display a fucking image.

  • Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface with minimal dependencies
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Dec 2023
    ImGui is engine/GPU agnostic

    Themeing isn't a just a retained mode thing, you can do wonders with immediate UIs, even thought (dear)ImGui doesn't provide much, you can still do wonders: https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/707#issuecomment-362...

    More on that topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1qyvQsjK5Y

  • Where do I start to learn C++ for a game development
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 10 Dec 2023
    Bonus: If you want to make desktop app with UI, then this is another great C++ library and it's also simple to learn as well. https://github.com/ocornut/imgui.
  • GUI library for fast prototyping
    3 projects | /r/rust | 6 Dec 2023
    AFAIK the Rust equivalent to C++'s Dear ImGui is egui.
  • Stretching myself thin with Dear ImGui projects
    2 projects | dev.to | 28 Nov 2023
    They use a Dear ImGui, a C++ GUI library.
  • PCSX2 Disables Wayland Support
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Nov 2023
    Aside from bugs and driver issues, Wayland has some unfortunate design limitations. For example, Dear ImGui multi-viewports don't work because "Wayland doesn't let application read or write windows positions."

    https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Multi-Viewports

    This is a feature available on Windows, macOS, and of course X11. Making choices like this means desktop Linux becomes even more of a weird island that nobody wants to support.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing win32metadata and imgui you can also consider the following projects:

rust-bindgen - Automatically generates Rust FFI bindings to C (and some C++) libraries.

wxWidgets - Cross-Platform C++ GUI Library

JNA - Java Native Access

nuklear - A single-header ANSI C immediate mode cross-platform GUI library

go - The Go programming language

NanoGUI - Minimalistic GUI library for OpenGL

winapi - Windows API declarations without <windows.h>, for internal Boost use.

GTK+ - Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk

zig - General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.

egui - egui: an easy-to-use immediate mode GUI in Rust that runs on both web and native

panama-foreign - https://openjdk.org/projects/panama

CEGUI