win32metadata VS JNA

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

As far as I understand it, with JNA, all calls into C code go through libffi: https://github.com/java-native-access/jna/blob/master/www/Fu...

This means that every call sets up some libffi data structures and libffi uses this information to perform the native call. Likewise in the other direction for return values. With JNI (and Panama), Hotspot can directly emit the argument/return code a the call, not too dissimilar from what a C or C++ compiler would do. There is still some overhead from maintaining JVM invariants. For example, I think a thread blocked in an FFI call can still participate in a safepoint. But that applies to JNI as well.

If you were prepared to go to the JVM you might try JNA. https://github.com/java-native-access/jna

Other good example, but for Java platform is JNA library. Do not mix it with Java's JNI, which is a bad example of how it could be done.

In case you haven't used it (assuming that you already know about JNI, for comparison) - https://github.com/java-native-access/jna is about as easy as it gets for native interop. Also, as mentioned in another comment, with the Java FFM (Foreign Function and Memory) API already in preview mode, pretty soon, there will be no external dependencies at all, and Java should be able to interop with any language that can talk to C.

The complexity of JNI has given rise to some community-driven libraries that make it simpler to do FFI in Java. Java Native Access (JNA) is one of them. It's built on top of JNI and at least makes FFI easier to use, especially as it removes the need to write any C binding code manually and reduces the chances of memory safety issues. Still, it has some of the disadvantages of being JNI-based and is slightly slower than JNI in many cases. However, JNA is widely used and battle-tested, so definitely a better option than using JNI directly.

This is about calling into any native operating system APIs, as long as they are callable via C or C++ (which these days means "all" operating system APIs).

JNI is somewhat harder to use, because you need custom glue on both sides of the border: Some custom classes in Java and some custom code on the C (and C++) side.

This proposal would remove the need for the glue on the C side and would allow a pure java solution.

Something like this has existed in third-party form for a while as JNA (https://github.com/java-native-access/jna), but now it's going to be built into the JRE itself (if the proposal passes through review)

I use JNA https://github.com/java-native-access/jna , as you can write the entire interface in Java faster as well as easier without the need of messing with the complexities of JNI.