Why wslwinreg?

Python runs on several Windows hosted platforms such as Windows itself, Cygwin, MSYS2 and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Each of these platforms has a Windows Subsystem which contains the Windows registry. Under Windows native versions of Python, the module winreg allows access to the Windows Registry API. However, this API exists under the other three platforms, but winreg is not available.

That’s where wslwinreg comes in!

This module will grant access to all winreg calls on Windows native platforms, either by passing through calls to winreg or implementing custom code to grant access.

Windows support

On Windows native platform, winreg is directly imported and all calls simply are passed through so the native implementation is used instead of the alternate versions.

Cygwin and MSYS2 support

CDLL on Cygwin and MSYS2 versions of Python allow access to the underlying native Windows APIs, so wslwinreg implements winreg calls through Python code that calls the native Windows API as needed.

Windows Subsystem for Linux support

Ubuntu and other distributions of Linux running under WSL run in a virtual machine that is isolated from the Window host machine to the point that native calls are not possible. To solve this issue, a Windows native backend is launched and through a loopback TCP/IP socket, communication is established so remote procedure calls can be issued and results returned to wslwinreg to allow access to the native Windows registry.

Testing

A unit test package, lovingly ripped off from Python 3.9.1 is run on all four platforms to ensure the same behavior is exhibited across all supported platforms. It is located in the folder unittests in the github source code tree.

Building the backend

To build the C++ backend, use Visual Studio 2022 with the 2017 XP compiler for x86 and x64 compilation. ARM and ARM64 are built with the 2022 C++ tool chain. The Release target will place the executables in the wslwinreg/bin folder for you. This backend is only used when running wslwinreg under WSL. It’s not used on any other platform.

Credits

wslwinreg is the insane creation of Rebecca Ann Heineman. If bugs are found, please send all information on how to recreate the bug to becky@burgerbecky.com