Thread overview
The future of the Windows API header translation project
Mar 16, 2007
Stewart Gordon
Mar 16, 2007
Dan
Mar 16, 2007
Sean Kelly
March 16, 2007
I've just been doing a bit more work on the Windows API headers when I had a thought or two.

Windows Vista is now here.  Vista-new API features will need to be included sooner or later.  But can we really do anything but wait for MinGW to be updated to Vista?

I've just updated the versioning system to accommodate Vista.  But maybe we should wait at least till we finally get up-to-date .lib files before we start adding stuff in this respect.


If I'm not mistaken, then Win64 is here as well.  I'm not sure how much of the code we'll need to change to support Win64.  One thing that's for sure is that we'll have to stop calling the package win32 at some point.  And I guess we'll also have to adjust some of the .lib names and string constant values.  But I don't know whether it's a simple matter of replacing all occurrences of "32" with "64" or something more complicated.

(Do we have a D compiler for Win64 yet?  DMD clearly hasn't got that far, but how's GDC doing here?)


Comments?

Stewart.
March 16, 2007
Stewart Gordon Wrote:

> I've just been doing a bit more work on the Windows API headers when I had a thought or two.

Thanks, m8.  I use them.

> 
> Windows Vista is now here.  Vista-new API features will need to be included sooner or later.  But can we really do anything but wait for MinGW to be updated to Vista?

Vista is evil.  That said, we'll still need headers for it.  Maybe I'm not understanding the details when I ask why that requires anything but the Vista C header files?

> If I'm not mistaken, then Win64 is here as well.  I'm not sure how much of the code we'll need to change to support Win64.  One thing that's for sure is that we'll have to stop calling the package win32 at some point.  And I guess we'll also have to adjust some of the .lib names and string constant values.  But I don't know whether it's a simple matter of replacing all occurrences of "32" with "64" or something more complicated.

If you want a hand, I'd be willing to help.  Not that I'm an amazing helper or anything, but I ought to hopefully be able to port header files.  One would hope.

> (Do we have a D compiler for Win64 yet?  DMD clearly hasn't got that far, but how's GDC doing here?)

Good question.  I kind of hope we manage to get this figured out rather quickly.  Otherwise there'll be 500,000 unfortunate people with Vista that can add D to the massive list of things they can't use.


March 16, 2007
Dan wrote:
> Stewart Gordon Wrote:
> 
>> Windows Vista is now here.  Vista-new API features will need to be included
>> sooner or later.  But can we really do anything but wait for MinGW to be
>> updated to Vista?
> 
> Vista is evil.  That said, we'll still need headers for it.  Maybe I'm not
> understanding the details when I ask why that requires anything but the
> Vista C header files?

The Microsoft headers are copyrighted.  And while I don't understand why MS would possibly care that their headers were ported to a new programming language (since doing so may actually increase the use of their platform/library/whatever, and the MS libraries themselves must still be available for the ported headers to function), it's safest to honor the copyright anyway.  The easiest way to do this is to port someone else's version of these headers instead, and the MinGW ones have a much less restrictive copyright associated with them.


Sean