Monthly Archives: May 2014

NodeRT: Accessing WinRT from Node.js

If you’re using node.js on Windows and are interested in getting easy access to some of the cool WinRT-based APIs in Windows 8.0 and later, you should check out the new NodeRT project on Github. It’s a tool that allows you to automagically generate native node.js modules from WinRT winmd metadata files, making them easily available in node:

Since node.js runs as a regular Win32 application and not a Windows Store application (is that what we’re calling Metro these days?), you won’t be able to get access to Store-only WinRT APIs, but there are still quite a few useful WinRT APIs available to desktop apps.

Pretty awesome, check it out!

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JsRT: Wrappers updated to v1.1

Even though I may not be working on the Chakra team any more, I’m still doing some noodling on making the hosting APIs easier to use. I’ve got some other interesting things coming soon, but on the way there I made some improvements/fixes to the wrappers that I released a while back.

Changes to v1.1:

  • PDB files are generated along with the LIB, and debug builds are included. All flavors are now packaged together.
  • Header file name is changed to jsrt-wrappers.h to be consistent with the other files.
  • Added equality operators for handles.
  • Added function_base::create which can deduce the strongly typed function wrapper from the function signature.
  • Fixes the handling of optional parameters in functions.
  • Changes the handling of rest parameters to use std::vector rather than a JavaScript array, which is more efficient.
  • Simplified prototype handling.
  • Bug fixes.

Let me know if there are any problems!

You should also follow me on Twitter here.

I Just Did Something I Swore I’d Never, Ever, Ever Do

OK, so I’ve worked at Microsoft… a long time. This summer, it’s going to be twenty two years since I first started full time, and twenty three years since I was an intern. During that time, I’ve worked in a lot of different places in the company. The Developer Division. Office. Developer Division again. A little division that doesn’t exist anymore, the Connected Systems Division. SQL. Developer Division again. And in all of that time, I had one cardinal rule: I was never, ever, ever going to work in Windows. No matter what happened, no matter how desperate I was, I was just never going to take a job anywhere in the Windows organization. No way, no how.

It’s not that I had anything against Windows or the Windows group, it’s just that for most of my tenure here so far, the Windows group has seemed… a little nuts. Not nuts in terms of what they’ve produced (although the whole Longhorn thing, ug), but in terms of how they seemed to work. From the outside, it looked like Windows was always on one kind of death march or another, from Windows 95 all the way through Windows Vista. And as much as I might like the OS, I just never thought that I was hardcore or badass enough to be able to withstand that kind of pressure.

There was also the fact that most of my career has centered around developers in one way or another, and for most of my time at Microsoft, Windows has been content to simply outsource the majority of the developer relationship to the Developer Division. This isn’t shocking or anything–hey, “Developer” is right there in the name!–but it meant that if I wanted to be working on developer-related stuff, there was only one place to be.

By now, I’m sure you’ve guessed where this is heading. After spending two very enjoyable years noodling on JavaScript hosting (and other related stuff) on the Chakra team, I’ve decided to break my longstanding vow and join Windows. Shocking, I know.

I decided to do this for two reasons. The first one is that since Windows Vista the Windows team seems to have adopted a much more sane attitude towards the whole work/life balance, something I got to see up close while working on a component that ships in Windows. They still work hard, don’t get me wrong, just that they no longer employ burly fellows to walk along the hall cracking whips every half hour.

The other reason is that since the Windows 8 cycle, the Windows team has a much more serious attitude towards supporting developers. They’ve even got a whole organization dedicated to it that works closely with the Developer Division and everything! And so when some acquaintances started chatting with me about some of the ideas the developer team in Windows had for future versions of Windows, I got interested. And then did an interview. And then accepted. So now here I am! Most of what I’m going to do isn’t public for the time being, so not a lot to say about that at the moment, but suffice it to say, I think it’s going to be interesting!

You should also follow me on Twitter here.