Welcome to the March 2026 edition of the Rust for Windows newsletter. This month saw steady progress across the project, with a particular focus on foundational improvements to code generation and metadata handling. The standout story for March was the rapid iteration and expansion of the new Windows metadata compiler & library - a key piece of infrastructure for modeling and processing Windows type metadata in a more structured, Rust-native way.
A preview of this new technology is now available here: https://youtu.be/VnE8Bm3M650
Quick links
Learning series
Part 4 of the Rust for Windows video series is now available on YouTube. This is a series for Windows developers wanting to learn how to make the most of Rust on the Windows platform.
What's next
The windows-rdl library crate is rapidly coming together to deliver the first universal API description language for Windows, a first-class metadata authoring experience directly in Rust. If you are currently struggling with MIDLRT or the Win32metadata tooling for generating metadata, be sure to reach out and I can help you figure out when you can begin to adopt 100% portable Rust tooling instead.
Whether you are defining a new API or just need to describe existing APIs, the windows-rdl crate lets you define Win32-style APIs with exported functions, structs, and unions. It lets you describe COM APIs with interfaces and inheritance. It lets you describe WinRT APIs with classes and delegates and async. And you can do it all in a single definition language and produce a single metadata file. You can then use that metadata to generate scaffolding for implementing those APIs in any language and generate bindings for calling those APIs from any language as well. This is not exclusive to Rust.
Wrapping up
And that's all for this update. Let me know what you think. What would you like to see more of? Are you using windows-rs today? Let me know so we can continue to prioritize investment in these tools and services.
Welcome to the March 2026 edition of the Rust for Windows newsletter. This month saw steady progress across the project, with a particular focus on foundational improvements to code generation and metadata handling. The standout story for March was the rapid iteration and expansion of the new Windows metadata compiler & library - a key piece of infrastructure for modeling and processing Windows type metadata in a more structured, Rust-native way.
A preview of this new technology is now available here: https://youtu.be/VnE8Bm3M650
Quick links
Learning series
Part 4 of the Rust for Windows video series is now available on YouTube. This is a series for Windows developers wanting to learn how to make the most of Rust on the Windows platform.
What's next
The
windows-rdllibrary crate is rapidly coming together to deliver the first universal API description language for Windows, a first-class metadata authoring experience directly in Rust. If you are currently struggling with MIDLRT or the Win32metadata tooling for generating metadata, be sure to reach out and I can help you figure out when you can begin to adopt 100% portable Rust tooling instead.Whether you are defining a new API or just need to describe existing APIs, the
windows-rdlcrate lets you define Win32-style APIs with exported functions, structs, and unions. It lets you describe COM APIs with interfaces and inheritance. It lets you describe WinRT APIs with classes and delegates and async. And you can do it all in a single definition language and produce a single metadata file. You can then use that metadata to generate scaffolding for implementing those APIs in any language and generate bindings for calling those APIs from any language as well. This is not exclusive to Rust.Wrapping up
And that's all for this update. Let me know what you think. What would you like to see more of? Are you using
windows-rstoday? Let me know so we can continue to prioritize investment in these tools and services.