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Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI
- codeulike 8mo agoGreat, thats not going to get confused with "Windows App" which is the new confusing and impossible to google name for Remote Desktop
- a_rahmanshah 8mo agoOr Winamp. I read it couple of times before I noticed it is not Winamp.
- imathew 8mo agoWinapp, it really whips the LLMas ass
- nacozarina 8mo agobaaa BAAA-aaaaa
- rootnod3 8mo agoGod damnit...that definitely deserves the upvote.
- sgt 8mo ago@dang can't we have a feature on HN where you vote a comment into the "hall of fame" or such?
- dang 8mo agoFor now you have to email us to add a comment to https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights. Eventually yes, we want to make this more built-in.
- tracker1 8mo ago+100 ... We definitely need a "super upvote" that you can use say 100 pts of karma to give to a comment.
- Markoff 8mo agoI just realized it now after reading your comment, I opened first comments to find out what's new about Winamp before opening the site
- ivanjermakov 8mo agoWindows App is the biggest naming blunder in history. Impossible to find relevant information.
- einr 8mo agoIt's perfectly clear: if you need to run a Windows app on another Windows PC, you just open the Windows app store on your Windows PC to download the Windows app Windows App, a Windows app that lets you connect to and run Windows apps on other Windows PCs.
- creamyhorror 8mo agoWindows PC? I think you mean "Windows app host" (once we all move to thin clients due to consumer PCs becoming unaffordable)
- pseidemann 8mo agoHow is such a product decision even possible? Genuinely curious.
- pixelpoet 8mo agoAsk the marketing department that destroyed one of the most famous brands on earth, MS Office, and renamed it to "Microsoft Copilot 365 app": https://office.com https://office.com
- luckman212 8mo agoThis is so bad it doesn't even seem humanly possible. Maybe this decision was made by Copilot itself.
- cobolexpert 8mo agoCopilot wanting to name everything Copilot is a funny thought, for some reason.
- copilot_king 8mo ago[dead]
- pixelpoet 8mo agoOne could say the error was [puts on shades]... unprompted.
- tomaytotomato 8mo agohttps://youtu.be/DA1-haV0qWU https://youtu.be/DA1-haV0qWU
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- lloydatkinson 8mo agoI read a Reddit comment on the thread for this where they suggested this was only made because of the old "windev vs devdiv" rivalry.
- dgxyz 8mo agoIf their stack wasn't so fucked up it wouldn't need this wrapper. (ex windows dev)
- reddalo 8mo agoI miss Win32 APIs.
- mhitza 8mo agoThey must be either incapable of binging for matching names, or its a sneaky strategy to bury, by influence, the existing winapps project https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
- anonymous908213 8mo agoI don't honestly think it's unreasonable to ignore third-party projects that are polluting your own namespace, so to speak.
- 1718627440 8mo agoTheir own namespace starts with "Microsoft ...".
- anonymous908213 8mo agoBy this logic the Linux WinApps namespace starts with fmstrat and there's no namespace conflict.
- 1718627440 8mo agoI am talking about the namespaces of terms in natural languages, not about some random website answering on github.com .
- anonymous908213 8mo agoIf you're talking about "namespaces in terms of natural languages", it's obvious that "Windows" and the shorthand "Win" are their own namespace, eg. Win32, WinUI, WinRT, and that the developer of Windows has every right to consider it their own namespace?
- 1718627440 8mo agoYeah I would expect a name starting with "Win" to be for or about the MS Windows operating system, but it doesn't need to have MS as a vendor. For that they need to use MS in the name, which is what there trademark is, and what they are very picky about to have included. Note, that "Windows" used to be a class of operating systems, not a specific one (as in an OS with a Windowed system and metaphor), e.g. X Windows also exists. The role of "Windows" in "MS Windows" is(used to be) really the same as "Basic" in "MS Basic". Also some people also have a (legal) opinion about the implications of using non-standard abbreviations of "MS Windows": https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Trademarks.html https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Trademarks.html
- dd_xplore 8mo agoI think this uses dockur to run the windows VM. That's also an awesome project.
- ludovicianul 8mo agoIt's the second time I see it on HN and read Winamp.
- Markoff 8mo agoobvious mistake, same here I wonder what would be cutoff age for readers to read it correctly, I guess under 30 read it correctly, and over 40 will many read it as Winamp
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago> I wonder what would be cutoff age for readers to read it correctly, I guess under 30 read it correctly, and over 40 will many read it as Winamp I am 17 and I wasn't wearing my glasses and I was really speaking winamp until I read your comment then scrolled back again to realize it was winapp My bet is that I spend time on HN so I knew what winamp is in more detail but if say friends my age read it & say they use tiktok more, I would say that they wouldn't call it winamp but winapp So I guess I might be one of the few exceptions but I feel like people on HN are much more likely to read it as winamp than not & age might not be thaaat big of an impact (atleast on HN)
- sh3rl0ck 8mo agoI'm 20 and I read Winamp, ha. I reckon that the majority of the HN audience is into older (perhaps more graceful) working technology despite all the fanfare that newer, shinier stuff garners.
- Markoff 8mo agoWinapp, NOT Winamp!
- reddalo 8mo agoAt first I was like... what does Winamp have to do with apps development?
- martijnvds 8mo agoLlamas are hot again.
- embedding-shape 8mo agoWell, was. Then Facebook AI made a side-step, and stopped focusing on downloadable LLM models, and Ollama is now trying to squeeze their users so they can show profits. r/LocalLlama is also a former shadow of itself, with the top moderator trying to move the community off reddit. Seems Llamas will disappear as quickly as they became trendy.
- nalekberov 8mo agoSeriously, bring Winamp back! It will really whip the Llama’s ass.
- asah 8mo agoBut does it whip the llama's ass ?
- pseufaux 8mo agoI read though the GitHub readme but I'm still unsure what "new" this brings this brings to the table. It seems like a thin wrapper over existing tools. Since Microsoft rarely deprecates and removes anything, this feels like just another unnecessary complexity layer. I'm not a traditional app dev on Windows though, so I'm likely missing something. For those of you who are more familiar, what about this are you excited about?
- pjc50 8mo agoIt is, but it's like "dotnet new" templates: a means of getting to a working minimal setup that jumps through the Microsoft hoops for you. MSIX and Package Identity are definitely headaches to get set up.
- ripley12 8mo agoYes, Package Identity was the bane of my existence for a while. It's wild how MS gated important APIs behind it and then made it so difficult+impractical to work with (I honestly think this is a large part of why WinRT was mostly ignored by developers). I've moved on, but this looks like it will at least fix some of the paper cuts.
- WorldMaker 8mo agoIt's a CLI for especially web developers that prefer CLI tools over graphical installers and needing to have big IDEs installed like Visual Studio. It's another small nail in the coffin of the monolithic Visual Studio, which is maybe exciting if you are rooting against Microsoft's paid products from their DevDiv and for their free-to-start options like VSCode.
- ttoinou 8mo agoI develop C++ software for Windows and couldn’t understand the point of this
- pjmlp 8mo agoNevermind, this was probably a team meeting some KPIs to show value, this is useless.
- grougnax 8mo agoOnce again, a useless, bug-ridden, layer of complexity by Microsoft on an already messy stack. What could possibly go wrong?
- pjmlp 8mo agoI already mentioned in a few places, this is useless, probably a team having to meet some KPIs, OKRs, or whatever to show their impact value on the next evaluation cycle. Anything related to WinUI, WinAppSDK, CsWinRT, C++/WinRT is a sea of bugs, broken tooling, and unfulfilled promises, that no one should bother with. Easily confirmed by going into their public repositories over at Github, or community session recordings over at YouTube. For those using .NET, keep using Windows Forms or WPF, or reach out to Avalonia and Uno. For those using C++, the aging MFC has much better tooling as incredible as it sounds, or use instead VCL/Firemonkey (C++ Builder), Qt, wxWidgets,.... For anything else, whatever bindings are available on top of plain Win32.
- vjvjvjvjghv 8mo agoI don’t rally understand what what they are thinking but it seems MS has given up on windows desktop dev. Even Office is now moving to web technology even if it means to make these apps worse.
- mycall 8mo agoBesides Visual Studio (WPF), much of Office 365 (or whatever they renamed it to) is using either React Native (MS edition) or Electron (Web Tech) so their latest code is a mixed bag.
- tracker1 8mo agoWorks for me, since I can use it in a browser in Linux... Though some of the new features really tick me off.
- WorldMaker 8mo agoOne of the many things this tool claims to be for is better automation of Electron and React Native integration. It seems like a tool designed for web stack developers that don't want to touch Visual Studio.
- actionfromafar 8mo agoOr just plain Win32, no wrappers! Maybe with coding agents it can have a renaissance.
- pelagicAustral 8mo agoI'm already sold to Claude Code for Windows Desktop development. Couple of months ago I used some shady C# SDK to build an implementation that interfaces with a very specific hardware component. My only option was Windows Forms, which I don't love very much but I have worked with extensibility in the past. I did not have a lot of faith, because of how weird it feels to ask an LLM to work with a design.cs file, but what I did was just sketch all the design and let Claude do the logic with certain specification on how I wanted to corral the code... App was flawless in about 2 days of work. It's in production now with zero faults. So, hard to now give this a shot, I already got my go-to tool. Even for something has arcane and obscure as Winforms.
- catapart 8mo agothis looks very plainly like "oh shit, devs are having a really hard time actually integrating with our AI services! That must be the only reason we are seeing adoption so slow. quick - throw a wrapper around some boostrappers that can get a green field project prepared for integration with our AI services (and whatever else can be done when you get that set up)."
- holoduke 8mo agoWhy am I reading winamp. Took me a minute to figure out.
- sirwhinesalot 8mo agoFor those unaware, the current recommended way to develop "native" apps for Windows is to use WinUI3, distributed with the WindowsAppSDK. Unlike regular Windows SDK, which lets you make use of the functionality provided by the OS, the WindowsAppSDK is entirely separate from the OS and requires the installation of a separate runtime on the user's machine. It also requires installing nuget packages on your machine to use it so good luck if you'd rather use straight CMake instead of Visual Studio. As far as I can tell, there's no backwards or forwards compatibility, so the end user has to install the specific version of the SDK your app uses, or you need to bundle all the hundreds of DLLs with your app yourself. A sane person might ask why not just use Qt (smaller distribution!) or Electron (about the same size) at that point, since they're cross platform and you can easily get fluent themes that look the same as WinUI3? As far as I can tell there's no sane negative answer to this question. It's not like your app's "fluent theme" will be updated alongside the OS, it's no different from Qt or Electron in this regard. There's no reason to do "native" windows development anymore, unless you mean using raw Win32 with no dark theme or a custom UI built on Direct2D/3D/Write. And if you are doing that, there's absolutely 0 reason to use this CLI.
- ptx 8mo ago> Win32 with no dark theme Couldn't this "dark theme" stuff be mapped onto the user-configurable Win32 color schemes that have been there since the beginning? Did Microsoft break it in Windows 11?
- sirwhinesalot 8mo agoIf you use classic unstyled Win32 controls (Windows 95-2000 style) then you can do that. If you use uxthemed Win32 controls (Windows XP onwards) then there's no official dark theme support.
- WorldMaker 8mo agoWindowsAppSDK (and its direct predecessor) was installed only by the OS in Windows 8 and early Windows 10 and everybody hated the OS updating it and needing to know things like which specific Windows 10 update a user was on to access features. It's a mess either way it is installed. > A sane person might ask why not just use Qt (smaller distribution!) or Electron (about the same size) at that point, since they're cross platform and you can easily get fluent themes that look the same as WinUI3? The "good news" about this tool is that it is partly for making it easier to use WinUI3 from Electron, so that you can have both large distributions at the same time.