DEdelta_p_delta_x·Jun 14, 2026
Use Windows Implementation Library to clean things up and get some RAII on handle types: https://github.com/microsoft/wil
In Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Latermicrosoft
wil
C++2019–2026
microsoft / wil
wil
Windows Implementation Library
10Distinct people
26Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Windows Implementation Library
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:59:58 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year26 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-05-09 00:15:35 UTC to 2026-06-14 14:36:13 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesThe blogger and the blog says:
> BTW: As a nice addition, if you use SAL annotations
> Windows C++ Programming
Not everyone will see the irony, but the Windows user-mode application and library suite and the kernel now very heavily rely on the safety mechanisms of C++ that the author calls 'complex', 'uglif[ied]', and has 'los[t] the taste for good readable code'. I'm of course referring to the Windows Implementation Library: https://github.com/microsoft/wil This is explicitly an effort from MS WinDev to make Windows C++ code safer. User-mode applications writing native Windows code can and absolutely should use it, too.
Any time I see `void*` in C++ I ring-fence it as a C-ism and make sure I `reinterpret_cast`. For me, a bag of bytes is `std::span<std::byte>`. void* is a memory location with no provenance, no ownership, no size informati
Read the rest
on, nothing. Do I even know if it is this program's memory, or some shared memory construct, or maybe even a pointer into GPU memory? No for all.
C likes to play fast and loose and its proponents call it 'beautiful and simple', I call it a segfault/use-after-free/double-free waiting to happen.
Microsoft/Wil: Windows Implementation Library
3 points · Open discussionNo one should use any of these weird Frankenstein monstrosities in 2026. And a batch script? :( PowerShell exists.
Install:
- contrary to the blog post, the entirety of Visual Studio, because the IDE and debugger is *really damn good*.
- LLVM-MinGW[1]
Load the 'VSDevShell' DLL[2] for PowerShell, and you're good to go, with three different toolchains now:
cl.exe from VS
clang-cl.exe—you don't need to install this separately in VS; just use the above-mentioned llvm-mingw clang.exe as `clang.exe --driver=cl /winsysroot <path\to\Windows SDK> /vctoolsdir <path\to\VC>`. Or you can use it in GNU-driver-style mode, and use -Xmicrosoft-windows-sys-root. This causes it to target the Windows ABI and links against the VS SDK/VC tools
`clang.exe` that targets the Itanium ABI and links against the MinGW libraries and LLVM libc++.
Done and
Read the rest
dusted. Load these into a CMake toolchain and never look at them again.
People really like overcomplicating their lives.
At the same time, learn the drawbacks of all toolchains and use what is appropriate for your needs. If you want to write Windows drivers, then forget about anything non-MSVC (unless you really want to do things the hard way for the hell of it). link.exe is slow as molasses, but can do incremental linking natively. cl.exe's code gen is (sometimes) slightly worse than Clang's. The MinGW ABI does not understand things like SAL annotations[3], and this breaks very useful libraries like WIL[4] (or libraries built on top of them, like the Azure C++ SDK[5] The MinGW headers sometimes straight up miss newer features that the Windows SDK comes with, like cfapi.h[6].
[1]: https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw
[2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/ide/reference...
[3]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/cpp/c-runtime-library/sal-...
[4]: https://github.com/microsoft/wil
[5]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-cpp
[6]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/win32/cfapi/build-...
There are some pretty useful abstractions and libraries that MinGW doesn't work with. Biggest example is the WIL[1], which Windows kernel programmers use and is a massive improvement in ergonomics and safety when writing native Windows platform code.
[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/wil
In I fixed Windows native development> plain Win32
Plain Win32 needs a renaissance. I worked with it and felt like a wizard. Message boxes, dialogue boxes, wizards, hammered out in pure C++. Combined with the Windows Implementation Library[1] I was writing fast, modern code.
[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/wil
In Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI