Boring32 is a small C++23 module-only static library framework developed as a hobby that provides a number of C++ convenience classes and functions around the Win32 (x64) API, with a particular emphasis on asynchronous primitives and functions. Boring32 provides wrapper classes for Win32 IPC and synchronisation primitives, such as events, mutexes, semaphores, timers, processes, threads, and thread pools, but also provides some additional classes for other things, such as compression, security, WinSock, and more. Boring32 embraces modern C++ and is written with the latest C++ features and conventions in mind. Boring32 is not meant to be a comprehensive abstraction over the Win32 API, just something about exploring how to work with the Win32 API in bleeding-edge C++.
Boring32 is built as a hobby and isn't intended to be an actual framework for production use. However, it's a useful practical reference for how to use Win32 functions and primitives (including some obscure ones), or how you might go about constructing your own wrappers around Win32 primitives. Some of the classes, e.g. Event, can be copied over into your own codebases with relatively minor changes. You can also use Boring32 as a launch point to explore some of the more obscure Win32 APIs, such as Windows Imaging Component and Windows Filtering Platform.
Building requires Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload installed. Simply clone this repository and open src\Boring32.sln and you should be able to build the project immediately and run the test project Boring32.Tests. The built static library is src\Build\x64\Debug. Boring32 is built with pure C++20 modules, so any dependent projects need to be able to find the module files. At the moment, these modules are not packaged into a release, but I might do this eventually.
The test project Boring32.Tests is a good reference of how to use Boring32, at least until I can devote a bit more time to documenting the various classes. Note that this project is still in development, so as time goes by, I'll be adding, modifying, and removing stuff. There's also a unit test project that can be used as a reference, and you can run these tests either from VS's test runner, or through the vstest.console.exe binary. This binary can be found in the VS build tools and can be invoked through the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022 like so: vstest.console.exe Boring32.UnitTests.dll. This returns 0 or 1, depending on whether the tests succeeded or failed (you can use echo Exit Code is %errorlevel% to check the return code from the command prompt).
Boring32 is now (2023-11-24) fully module-based and has eliminated any direct reliance on the Windows headers. Some unit tests will likely fail on your machine as they are referencing objects (e.g. certificates) in my local environment I use for testing Win32 API calls. You can safely ignore these failures or comment them out.
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