[Development] Header file cleanups

[Joerg Bornemann]

On 01/03/2012 16:43, ext BRM wrote:

> For years, Microsoft advocated the use of simply including the "windows.h" header file. However, this ultimately led to a very very big problem - one that ended up with circular dependencies between user space and kernel space. It also cost them a lot of money to correct in their own code - having first developed a version of Windows that while it works was so poorly performing they couldn't deliver it at a cost of 3 years of development, only to throw it out and start over with major efforts towards reducing the dependency levels and another 3 years of development to produce what because Windows Vista, and follow on to Windows 7 at substantially less work. As a result, they also no longer advocate the use of 'windows.h' (they seem to have removed it from the newer SDKs), and the header levels have broken down. The new structure they have is far more resilient, leaner, and easier to work with. (Note, this was just one of the many issues they had during
>   the development of what became Vista. But it was a big issue.)

Just out of interest: what is this "new header structure" you're talking 
about? AFAICS I'm still asked to include windows.h even the 
documentation additionally tells me where a function is declared.


BR,

Jörg