win32metadata VS wil

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

Even then, MFC and C++/CX were the only productive ways to use it from Microsoft SDKs.

.NET isn't as convenient as VB 6 was, fully embracing COM as the VBX replacement model, technically introduced in VB5, but still some stuff was lacking.

Then there is Delphi and C++ Builder.

It beat me that having doubled down on COM since how Longhorn went down, and Windows team getting their way doing avoiding .NET to take over, they hardly managed to create nice tooling as the competition.

Editing IDL files with a Notepad like experience, manually merging generated code, and a couple of frameworks that barely go beyond yet another way to do AddRef/Release/QueryInterface and aggregation.

Meanwhile D-BUS, XPC and AIDL, provide much better dev experience.

Pity that Borland products are kind of tainted due to mismanagement decisions, otherwise maybe fixing COM dev experience would already been seriously taken by VS team.

Ah, nowadays WIL is probably the best approach when having only to consume COM.

https://github.com/microsoft/wil

Have a look at WIL for a C++ library used by Microsoft themselves, including kernel development.

I'm digging for more information and it looks like Microsoft's created a way to handle the problems I'm trying to address with this: https://github.com/Microsoft/wil/wiki/RAII-resource-wrappers

Since we are on this subject, those that need a nice C++ library to deal with COM in VC++, are better served with WIL.

Not since Vista.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/kernel-...

> Creates a binary that can be executed in the Windows kernel. The code in the current project gets compiled and linked by using a simplified set of C++ language features that are specific to code that runs in kernel mode.

And then there is WIL, https://github.com/microsoft/wil

https://community.osr.com/discussion/291326/the-new-wil-libr...

> First off, let me point out that this library is used to implement large parts of the OS. There are hundreds of developers here who use it. So unlike, uh, some other things that get tossed onto github, this project is not likely to wither and die tomorrow.

> There are, however, only a handful of kernel developers working on the library, so the kernel support has been coming along much slower. I'd like to expand the existing kernel features in depth ....

> Plus C++ standard library can't be used anyway and auto pointers aren't really that much of a concern at the kernel level

https://github.com/microsoft/wil

"Ah, but that isn't used on the Windows kernel" would be the expected reply, well

https://community.osr.com/discussion/291326/the-new-wil-libr...

"Microsoft's toolchain does not ship a copy of the STL that works in kernel mode. Partly this is because the kernel's CRT doesn't support C++ exceptions. (And partly this is because I/O is wildly different in kernel, so you'd have to rewrite the implementation of all the I/O libraries.)

But for kernel developers, wil ships a subset of an STL implementation. To avoid conflicting with the real STL, it's available under the wistd namespace. The rule of thumb is that wistd::foo is a drop-in replacement for std::foo."

Windows is a mix of legacy C code, which started to be migrated into C++ around the Vista time (hence /kernel in VC++) and .NET/COM (WinRT is basically COM with some extras).

Modern kernel code makes use of WIL.

https://github.com/microsoft/wil