go-bindings-winrt

Idiomatic Go bindings for the Windows Runtime — the Windows.* API surface: toasts/notifications, Bluetooth LE, storage, speech, Windows.Management.* MDM/provisioning, and everything else in the Windows SDK contract winmds. The full surface ships: every namespace in the ingested contracts is generated, compiled, and committed — 282 packages from Windows.ApplicationModel to Windows.Web.UI.Interop, pinned in metadata/emit-roots.txt.

Go strings in and out, error returns carrying real HRESULTs, typed event handlers for Go functions, a blocking Await() on async operations, and Go-implemented collection objects the OS can consume.

Install

go get github.com/deploymenttheory/go-bindings-winrt@latest

Windows on amd64/arm64; every Windows-facing file carries //go:build windows && (amd64 || arm64).

Quick start

A toast notification, end to end:

import "github.com/deploymenttheory/go-bindings-winrt/bindings/winrt/ui/notifications"

statics, err := notifications.ToastNotificationManagerStatics()
defer statics.Release()
doc, err := statics.GetTemplateContent(notifications.ToastTemplateTypeToastText01)
defer doc.Release()
toast, err := notifications.CreateToastNotification(doc)
defer toast.Release()
notifier, err := statics.CreateToastNotifierWithId("my.app.aumid")
defer notifier.Release()
err = notifier.Show(&toast.IToastNotification)

Start with docs/getting-started.md for the mental model (three layers, activation, Release discipline).

Examples

Runnable programs under examples/, all verified live; each degrades gracefully when hardware or identity is missing:

Example	What it shows
calendar	Direct activation vs a factory constructor consuming a Go-implemented IIterable<String>
toast	Template XML → DOM mutation → ToastNotification → notifier Show/Hide
async	GetFileFromPathAsync(...).Await(), plus the failure path via errors.As
events	A typed Go handler on IMemoryBufferReference.Closed: add, fire, remove, Close
collections	Consume an OS vector view; pass a Go-backed iterable into a factory
bluetooth	Adapter capabilities; a ~3 s BLE advertisement scan via the typed Received handler
packages	PackageManager current-user package query
speech	Installed voices; synthesize a phrase to a stream and report its size
mdmpolicy	MdmAllowPolicy statics reads

Documentation

• Getting started — install, the three-layer model, activation, statics, factory constructors, Release discipline.
• Strings and memory — HSTRING lifecycle, refcount rules, the out-param heap invariant.
• Async operations — Await, AsyncError/errors.As, IAsyncInfo, bounding waits.
• Events and delegates — typed handlers, tokens, borrowed arguments, the execution model.
• Collections — monomorphized generics, iteration, Go-implemented collections.
• The generator — for contributors: pipeline, emit-roots, the diagnostics ratchet, the determinism gate.
• Roadmap / state — what is landed vs deferred.

Capabilities

Area	State
Interfaces, runtime classes, enums, value structs	Emitted — absolute vtable-slot dispatch, constructors, As<Name>() queries
Statics + factory constructors	Emitted — package-level accessors and Create* functions
Events	Emitted — Add/Remove accessors + typed Go handler constructors
Async	Emitted — synthesized blocking Await() on IAsyncOperation<T>/IAsyncAction and the WithProgress variants
Generic instantiations	Emitted — monomorphized per consuming package, pinterface-derived IIDs
Go-implemented collections	Emitted + runtime — element-generic IIterable/IVectorView/writable IVector with generated typed constructors (New<IIterableOfX>); winrt.NewStringIterable et al. remain
Composable classes (Windows.UI.* hierarchy)	Emitted, instantiate-only — New<Class> null-outer composable constructors, direct activation, statics, As<Name>() queries; Go-side derivation out of scope (inherited interfaces via winrt.QueryInterface)
Delegate-returning methods (get_Completed), arrays, float ABI, wide by-value structs, Go-implemented maps	Deferred — per-member skips tracked by the diagnostics ratchet

Every degradation is per member, never per namespace: skipped members leave // slot N: name skipped: reason comments and an entry in the committed diagnostics baseline, and vtable slots never renumber.

How it is built

The tree is generated from pinned Microsoft.Windows.SDK.Contracts winmds through a committed IR (go run ./cmd/generate fetch-metadata | ingest | bindings), with CI enforcing byte-identical regeneration and a diagnostics ratchet that only ever shrinks. Details in docs/generator.md.

Related projects

Part of the deploymenttheory Windows bindings family:

• go-winmd — the shared ECMA-335 .winmd metadata reader
• go-bindings-win32 — the Win32 API surface — functions, structs, enums, COM
• go-bindings-wdk — the Windows Driver Kit / user-mode Native API surface
• go-bindings-wmi — typed WMI/CIM classes
• go-bindings-winrt — the WinRT API surface (shipping) (this repo)

License

MIT.