windows-rs VS Native Windows GUI

I'd say Rust does have that big ticket ecosystem push. Microsoft has been embracing Rust lately, with things like official Windows bindings [1].

The bigger problem is just inertia: large game engines are enormous.

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs

It's a shame that, unlike with Win32, using WinUI places pretty harsh restrictions on which programming languages and environments you can use. Only C# and C++ are supported, the latter only with Microsoft compilers. For everything else, including Rust[1], Python and MinGW C/C++, there is no answer for OP's question, and the effect of this on the visual consistency of the Windows desktop is obvious - there is none. Every third-party app uses a different toolkit with a different look and feel, because the library providing the standard look and feel simply isn't available to the majority of developers.

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs/pull/1836

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs

On Windows you'd need to call the LoadLibraryEx method. You'd also need a crate to call Win32 functions, I suggest windows-rs.

windows-rs, Microsoft's crate wrapping the Windows API, already includes the WDK, the special sdk for creating kernel code.

On windows, I'll probably use https://github.com/gabdube/native-windows-gui or https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs both of them seem pretty solid.

*nod* It's an official Microsoft thing generated from official Microsoft API definition files. (The repo is at microsoft/windows-rs on GitHub.)

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:

Is something wrong with https://github.com/deviceplug/btleplug or you haven't found it? You could also use bindings to platform libraries like https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs and https://github.com/rust-mobile/ndk if btleplug doesn't have something fundamental to you.

On windows, I'll probably use https://github.com/gabdube/native-windows-gui or https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs both of them seem pretty solid.

https://github.com/gabdube/native-windows-gui isn't in the list but is quite a polished option for building Windows specific GUIs.

My crate native-windows-gui supports tray application, if you only care about Windows. Example: https://github.com/gabdube/native-windows-gui/blob/master/native-windows-gui/examples/system_tray_d.rs

Created a small resident windows program that shows a different icon depending on battery level test how easy using windows-rs and native-windows-gui is. Picked this as an easy learning project after seeing Battery Buddy for macOS.

native-windows-ui => https://github.com/gabdube/native-windows-gui

If you only need to support Windows desktop, then let me shill my crate: native-windows-gui. It's super lightweight and it wraps pretty much all the gui stuff provided by win32. Just note that isn't really customizable look-wise.