Microsoft released the Resource Technology (MRT), an open-source project that supports the company's efforts behind Project Reunion to resolve incompatibilities between Win32 applications and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP).
In May at the Build 2020 conference, Microsoft unveiled Project Reunion as part of its plan to reverse the bugs it created with the "Universal Apps/One Windows platform" in Windows 8.
In May, Microsoft also released WinUI 3, a modern and native UI framework for Windows 10. WinUI 3.0 is Microsoft's next-generation user interface platform for Windows and Windows 10X.
Windows 8 was intended to bridge Win32 application development with a new operating system that could run modern apps in full screen.
The MRT Core, which was released by Microsoft on GitHub, is a new «resource loader» that will be used together with WinUi 3, according to Miguel Ramos, program manager on the engineering team at Microsoft.
“MRT was introduced to Windows around the time of Windows 8 and has evolved as a resource since then,” Microsoft says in the new GitHub repository for MRT.
It offers developers merged Win32 and UWP APIs so they can add modern features, such as the Share panel, to their desktop apps. It is based primarily on WinUI 3 and WebView2, another Microsoft technology for embedding web content into an app.
Recent components added to Project Reunion include the C++/WinRT, Rust/WinRT, and C#/WinRT.
Microsoft plans to release a NuGet package on GitHub that will allow application developers to create PRI files from Visual Studio and use MRT Core APIs to load resources in their applications.
