WIL can be used by C++ code that uses C++ exceptions as well as code that uses returned
error codes to report errors. All of WIL can be used from user-space Windows code,
and some (such as the RAII resource wrappers) can even be used in kernel mode.
# Documentation
This project is documented in [its GitHub wiki](https://github.com/Microsoft/wil/wiki). Feel free to contribute to it!
# Consuming WIL
WIL follows the "live at head" philosophy, so you should feel free to consume WIL directly from the GitHub repo however you please: as a GIT submodule, symbolic link, download and copy files, etc. and update to the latest version at your own cadence. Alternatively, WIL is available using a few package managers, mentioned below. These packages will be updated periodically, likely to average around once or twice per month.
## Consuming WIL via NuGet
WIL is available on nuget.org under the name [Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary/). This package includes the header files under the [include](include) directory as well as a [.targets](packaging/nuget/Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary.targets) file.
## Consuming WIL via vcpkg
WIL is also available using [vcpkg](https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg) under the name [wil](https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/blob/master/ports/wil/portfile.cmake). Instructions for installing packages can be found in the [vcpkg GitHub docs](https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/blob/master/docs/examples/installing-and-using-packages.md). In general, once vcpkg is set up on the system, you can run:
```cmd
C:\vcpkg> vcpkg install wil:x86-windows
C:\vcpkg> vcpkg install wil:x64-windows
```
Note that even though WIL is a header-only library, you still need to install the package for all architectures/platforms you wish to use it with. Otherwise, WIL won't be added to the include path for the missing architectures/platforms. Execute `vcpkg help triplet` for a list of available options.
# Building/Testing
To get started testing WIL, first make sure that you have a recent version of [Visual Studio](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/) and the most recent [Windows SDK](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk) installed. If you are doing
any non-trivial work, also be sure to have a recent version of [Clang](http://releases.llvm.org/download.html) installed. Once everything is installed, open a VS
native command window (e.g. "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022"). If you are familiar with CMake you can get started building normally. Otherwise, or if you prefer to skip all of the boilerplate, you can use one of the scripts in the [scripts](scripts) directory:
You can execute `init.cmd --help` for a summary of available options. The scripts use a common directory pattern of `build/$(compiler)$(arch)$(type)` for the build output root. E.g. `build/clang64debug` when using Clang as the compiler, x64 as the architecture, and Debug as the build type. It is this directory where you will want to build from. For example, if you initialized using the command above, you can build the tests like so:
```cmd
C:\wil\build\clang64debug> ninja
```
Or, if you want to only build a single test (e.g. for improved compile times):
```cmd
C:\wil\build\clang64debug> ninja witest.noexcept
```
If you initialized using MSBuild as the generator, there will be a `.sln` file in the root of the build directory. You
can either open the solution in Visual Studio or invoke MSBuild directly to build.
The output is a number of test executables. If you used the initialization script(s) mentioned above, or if you followed
the same directory naming convention of those scripts, you can use the [runtests.cmd](scripts/runtests.cmd) script,
which will execute any test executables that have been built, erroring out - and preserving the exit code - if any test
fails. Note that MSBuild will modify the output directory names, so this script is only compatible with using Ninja as the
generator. If you are at the tail end of of a change, you can execute the following to get a wide range of coverage:
```cmd
C:\wil> scripts\init_all.cmd
C:\wil> scripts\build_all.cmd
C:\wil> scripts\runtests.cmd
```
Note that this will only test for the architecture that corresponds to the command window you opened. You will want to
