Use win32metadata for calling win32 apis from c#

[martinchrzan]

Multiple PT c# projects are using win32 apis by manualy defining its wrappers.

Win32metadata project provides generation of win32 api wrappers for c# without a need for manually maintaining files with dllimport functions signatures, which are error prone.

More details can be found here:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/01/21/making-win32-apis-more-accessible-to-more-languages/

https://github.com/microsoft/win32metadata

[htcfreek]

Sounds interesting. But do we add a source for failures of we use this?

[royvou]

It looked like an interesting PR to pickup but while working (checking how it all works) on it the tooling/packages don't 'feel' ready to be implemented. I think the following prerequisites are needed for this PR (at this moment).

• Update to .NET5 for better Source generator support
  • For correct WPF support, we should ensure the latest .NET SDK is used (https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32/issues/7) otherwise it won't generate the files within WPF.
• Update to C# 9 (https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32/issues/4) (Which should be an easy one after PT is on .NET 5)

Otherwise there are still a few nice to haves 'issues'/PRS open within that repo :)

Should we also wait until a RC/'Official' release is provided? Currently they all have the 'Beta' flag. Install-Package Microsoft.Windows.CsWin32 -Version 0.1.422-beta

Still think its a great task to have on the backlog, just not for now.

[enricogior]

@royvou thank you for looking into this one, but we don't really need it right now, the team is focused to bring stability and adding more dependencies is not something that will help.

[royvou]

I just wanted to add that information because it has the "Help Wanted" tag :) So if someone thinks "I want to pickup something with the 'help wanted' tag, they should prefer another task over this one .

[enricogior]

@royvou thanks again for looking into this ;)