Thursday, September 22, 2011

Reuse of legacy software by WinRT and Metro (Windows 8) (Portable Libraries part 2)

 

This is a follow up to my previous post Create a Metro App in F# (NOT).

Things become quit complex if you want to reuse your windows legacy software. In this case legacy has a positive connotation. Legacy software is an asset of you and/or your company.

Suppose one want to reuse it and make it available for a Metro app on Windows 8 what are your options? After watching some of the build presentations:

 

I came up with the following flow chart:

 

LegacyWinRT_4

So:

  • You can reuse html, css and JavaScript.
  • I am not an expert on C++, COM, etc. so I do not know.
  • If you have only a dll you cannot use it.
  • If you have source code that references a language dll (like F#) or have no options today. This will change when the final product becomes available.
  • If you want to create a Metro Style project in C++ or JavaScript you can reuse your components code by fixing issues and recompile it to a WinMD file (WinRT component). Some issues can be exposing:
    • non WinRT types
    • non sealed classes
    • non system provided generic types
  • If you want to create a Metro Style project and this is one of the .NET languages you can reuse your components code by fixing issues and recompile it to a dll. Some issues can be:
    • Streams

 

Disclaimer: This is my current understanding, based on the presentations I viewed. If you have other information available please leave a note in the comments.

1 comment:

Jon Harrop said...

This is really frustrating. I'd buy VS2012 and a Microsoft Surface RT tablet if I knew I could use them to develop tablet software for my client but I have no idea from Microsoft's mixed signals if this is possible or not...

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