Extensions for the windows-rs and windows-sys crates

The code here is not (yet?) meant as a production-quality crate. It exists to provide basic implementations of macros and header-only functions from the Windows SDK. Initially proposed as a collection of snippets to be added to Kenny Kerr's blog in a formalized feature request where it was initially decided to add snippets to the blog.

When it became clear that perhaps blog snippets weren't the best option due to no testing and high review burdens, the choice was made to move out the snippets to an automatically testable crate in the last comment. This is the repo for that. That said, the goal has since become to make this a usable crate to provide those functions and wrappers directly, but for that it needs to grow into a useful collection of helpers that provide what the win32 metadata project doesn't.

I'd like to extend my thanks to @kennykerr and @tim-weis for their patience and flexibility in handling this situation. I hope they'll hold a continued involvement in keeping this crate accurate as we move forward. I'd also like to motivate additional contributors. If anyone has any ideas for this, feel free to open an issue or PR. Things like writing contributing guidelines aren't my wheelhouse, so feel free to provide what formalities and TLC it lacks.

General structure

The code here is all part of one big crate, but like the windows crate, all components are feature gated to prevent building more than what's required. This will, in time, allow for testing to be as granular as possible and to prevent massive binary sizes from having a lot of unused features. This should also help organize things into logical bits and pieces that mirror the existing headers as closely as possible. Taking the approach of the crates we extend also allows for defining features that will make extension traits available that are relevant to a specific workload in them. The end goal is, after all, making life easier for people that want to build against the Windows SDK.

In the future, other crates might be created to further split things out. For example WinRT for COM and stuff for the graphics stack are defined mostly separate from the core OS interfaces exposed in the windows crates. These might at some point split off if the feature list grows too large or if the amount of utility functions warrants it being used independently.

Licensing

Nothing strange here, really. Like a lot of other crates in the ecosystem, this is licensed under either Apache 2.0 or MIT at your option.

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any and all contributions submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache 2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, with no additional terms or conditions.

FAQ

• Q: I really want to use this crate in my code, can I?
  A: You can. The real question is if you should.

• Q: Okay, so should I?
  A: No. At least in its current state, this crate provides almost nothing of interest unless you're afraid of bitops. Maybe in the future though, once more time and effort has been sunk in.

• Q: I'm missing macro X from header Y!
  A: Questions ususally have question marks. But I understand the problem and frustration, so please open an issue or roll your own and hit us with a PR!

• Q: I want to add stuff, but where can I find the C++ implementations to base myself on?
  A: In the Windows SDK. Look around on MSDN and the web on where to get that. It should come with any Visual Studio install that includes Windows 10/11 SDK workloads.

• Q: I'm missing all of a family of functions, where are they? (this was actually opened for the full MI_* suite)
  A: You can add them yourself! Or open an issue to ask for them and hope it's picked up in a timely manner. This project is a volunteer effort and time is sparse.

• Q: I requested something but it was closed as wontfix, why is that?
  A: Some macros are actually only relevant to the C++ stuff and this repo only exists for actual added value. If you believe the request to add value for Rust as well, feel free to keep the discussion on the issue thread going, or PR it in to show where the added value lies.

• Q: My question isn't in here, and none of these seem to make sense. What should I do?
  A: Frequency and a very young crate don't mix, so these were just the first few things I could think of that people would ask. That said, issues are a perfectly fine place to ask questions, and if one sticks out, it'll find its place here.