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zigwin32gen

Autogenerated Zig bindings for Win32 using https://github.com/marlersoft/win32json

How to generate the Windows Zig bindings

Download zig, currently tested on version: 0.11.0-dev.3886+0c1bfe271

First, clone the zigwin32 repo from the root of this repository to provide a location for the generated files:

git clone https://github.com/marlersoft/zigwin32

Then run the following command to generate the latest bindings:

zig build

On the first run, running this command will provide an error message saying that the win32json dependency is missing, and will provide you with a git command to clone it and checkout the expected version.

Once the build task completes, you can view your generated code in the zigwin32 subrepository that you cloned earlier.

win32json vs C/C++ Win32 SDK

The win32metadata project from which win32json is generated does not expose the exact same interface as the classic C/C++ header files did. One thing I'd like is to support is to be able to take a Windows C/C++ example and port it to Zig without changing any names/types or the way it interfaces with the Windows API. To support this I'll need to:

  • Support a set of modules with the same structure as the Window headers. For example, importing the windows module should have all the same declarations as the windows.h header.
  • Generate structs with the same field names (hungarian notation)
  • Support code that can be compiled for either Ascii or Wide characters. Provide mappings like CreateFile to CreateFileA or CreateFileW based on this configuration.

For example, intead of DWORD or UINT32, I would generate u32. Instead of field names with hungarian notation, I would generate them with snake case. These would only be cosmetic changes, where it would look more natural to use the Windows API directly alongside other Zig APIs. The bigger advantage to this is not having to track all the different ways to declare the same type, for example, a developer having to know that DWORD, UINT32, ULONG, UINT are all the same as u32.

  • I may want to be able support different "views" into the api that change things like how to import the api. These extra views should not add to compile-time unless they are being used.
  • I may want to consider also generating wrapper APIs? It's clear that wrapping APIs should exist, but I'm not sure if this wrapping API should be created/maintained manually or autogenerated from the Windows API data.
  • I may want to make it possible to generate subsets of the complete API. One example of where this could be used it to generate bindings to be included in the standard library, where only a small portion of the complete API is required.

notnull.json

This file contains extra information about the win32 API, namely, which struct fields and function parameters are "not null". By default, all pointer types in the metadata are treated as being "optional" (i.e. ?*T). notnull.json contains modifiers for types that make them non-optional (i.e. *T). The format of notnull.json is the following:

{
    "<api_name>": {
        "Functions": {
            "<function_name>": [<return_type_modifier>, <param_0_modifier>, <param_1_modifier>, ...]
            ...
        }
    }
    ...
}

The return_type_modifier and param_X_modifier values are integer flags. Each flag in the integer modifies a pointer in the type to be "non-optional". For example, consider the type ?*?*?*T. The integer value 0 would leave the type unmodified. The integer value 1 would modify the first pointer in the type to make it *?*?*T. The integer value 2 would modify the second pointer in the type to become ?**?*T. The integer value 7 would modify all 3 pointer types to become ***T.