This is quite timely as we need to write a simple UI for Windows (a few buttons, status, maybe a file menu). The main constraint is it must compile to a single binary (.exe) with no dependencies such as runtimes, DLLs, languages etc. It also needs to run on some older unsupported Windows systems, probably Windows >= 7, 32 bit.

My first thought was MFC. Basic, fast, well understood.

But then maybe WxWindows so we can cross-compile it (from Linux) and use the same UI on other platforms? It could probably be compiled statically although I've not tested it.

Or Mono, but that needs a runtime?

Edit: Some comments mention Qt which could also work although how large is the runtime? Can it be compiled statically?

When I tried to release a flutter app via exe installer, google drive said it was a virus but it otherwise installed just fine in windows 10/11. I'm doing the same thing for msix for now. But when I searched for certificates I could only find closer to $200/yr and you need to load it in the latest $100 yubikey due to the fips requirement. I didn't realize that CAs dont let you just get the private/public key files any more. Only distribution method is hardware based fips key. I've given up entirely on code signing since I only made a single open source project for amateur radio.

Really nice article, thanks - yes I found the same myself recently when trying to write a trivial (I thought) Windows app.

I first investigated the Windows native options and was pretty bamboozled; I wanted to use the "mainstream" "up to date" option (presumably c# and some framework) but as TFA describes, it wasn't at all clear which that was.

I ended up doing it in python with pyqt then finding out a clean deployment was a pain, so revisited the .Net options and remembered why I'd discarded them in the first place...

It is indeed a complete mess (at least coming in anew) and a very strange situation for the world's main desktop environment to be in.

The Windows code signing experience has prevented me from shipping apps that otherwise run perfectly fine on the platform. It is a nightmare and I cannot believe it wasn't called out in the "We want to fix Windows" blog post.

Just do exactly what Apple does. Charge me $100 directly from you and let me build an .exe that I can distribute on my website.

> One might think that an advantage of controlling C# would be that Microsoft has carefully shaped and coevolved it to be the perfect programming language for Windows APIs. This does not appear to be the case.

I think they spent all their mana for that on pre-.NET Visual Basic and then had nothing left.

*has been for 20+ years

Meanwhile editions of Gnome come with Gnome Builder and Flatpak has solved the distribution problem. Things are so much better today on Linux than most people who have used Windows will even remember.

It has been a mess for 15 years and Microsoft keeps making it worse by adding new frameworks without retiring the old ones. Win32, WPF, WinUI, MAUI. Nobody knows which one to pick.

> 9 MiB

I'm glad people still care about stuff like this. It drives me insane that the simplest form-based software that I build and compile ends up being 50-100 MiB; several times video games from the 80s that I grew up with that did much more complex work, graphically and computationally, on a tenth of the space.

"So when I went to work on my app, I was astonished to find that twenty years after the release of WPF, the boilerplate had barely changed."

Such is the benefit and the curse, I guess, of having the Windows API being locked in the distant past for backwards compatibility.

I've always been surprised that Microsoft didn't do a full operating system refactor and provide a compatibility layer for running old binaries. Perhaps they figure it would be better to just transition everything to software as a service using web tech? But I just don't see how that strategy is gonna work long-term.

Excellent summary of the stupid state of Windows native GUI app development after the complete lack of direction or coherence Microsoft has shown. Not to mention the irony of Visual Studio not having a GUI designer for anything except Windows Forms.