What's up with the windows headers?

[Stewart Gordon]

On 27/12/2012 11:40, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
<snip>
> Transition is one issue, but as I understand it, there are issues
> with regards to versioning, since druntime tends assume that
> there's only one OS version instead of asking you which version
> you're building for,

Are you talking about issues like this?
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=6024

This is an issue that needs to be resolved by using code that works in 
all 32-bit Windows versions or, if this can't be done, detecting the OS 
version at runtime.  Not by getting the programmer to specify the target 
version of Windows, since such specification doesn't belong in a program 
that is written to be platform-agnostic.

As such, no version identifiers in druntime for Windows versions 
(besides Win32/Win64) is exactly how it should be at the moment.  Once 
we add Windows API bindings, only _then_ should we worry about adding 
these version identifiers.  And, unless there's something else I've 
missed, we can take care of it by simply migrating WindowsAPI across as 
it is.

If the fix to bug 6024 (and any similar issues) involves calling an 
XP-specific function that is currently declared in c.s.w.w without 
versioning, the module in druntime could have its own private 
redeclaration of this function.

<snip>
> I think that there were also issues with
> different approaches for handling types between what the Windows API project is
> doing now and what druntime is doing now.

When you say "handling types", what kinds of stuff you mean?

> We need a D developer who's familiar with Windows and the Windows
> API project to step up and take it on.

I believe we already have that somebody - me.  What we're lacking is:
- somebody who is in this position and actually has plenty of time to 
look into it
- a clear decision on what is the minimum Windows version D2 is to 
support (given that the abandonment of D1 is imminent)
- a clear decision on when to do the migration - get it over with as 
soon as we can and then pull updates as and when, wait until the 
bindings are finished, or somewhere between the two extremes?

> The last, major discussion on it was instigated by someone
> interested in doing it, but they weren't all that familiar with the
> Windows side of things, and it seems that some issues weren't
> properly sorted out, so it never went anywhere.

Which discussion are you referring to as "the last, major discussion on it"?

Stewart.