When developing apps, it’s essential for developers to be able to reuse their code and build on existing skills, without having to reinvent the wheel. The good news is that you can count on a lot of libraries and SDKs from partners, but also from the open source communities to support Windows Store apps.
Windows is a great playground for open source developers and many apps in the Store use open source frameworks and libraries already. You can find a lot of C++, C#, JavaScript open source libraries and frameworks that just work in Windows Store apps.
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. (MS Open Tech), wholly owned subsidiary, is also working closely with the open source communities to add key C++ and JavaScript frameworks to the long list of open source technologies that support Windows Store apps.
Tools for creating libraries and SDKs for Windows Store apps
Windows 8 and Visual Studio not only offer various options for developers to build Windows Store apps, including C++, JavaScript/HTML5, C#/XAML, but they also let you build libraries and SDKs for Windows Store apps easily. You can check out Jason Olson’s //build/ session below about technologies like NuGet, Visual Studio Extensions, or programs such as http://services.windowsstore.com.
Download this video to view it in your favorite media player:
High quality MP4 | Lower quality MP4
MS Open Tech helps bringing more open source goodness for Windows Store apps
MS Open Tech has been working with many open source technologies to help Web and C++ developers extend their reach and have their code work seamlessly on Windows devices.
You can now integrate your code using Cocos2DX, Cinder, Box2D, Bullet to a C++ Windows Store app project and rapidly get your app or game running on Windows 8 and published to the Windows Store. OpenCV and Ogre3D are also coming soon.
And as a Web developer, you can benefit from the work done by the community and MS Open Tech to make jQuery fully support Windows Store apps, simultaneously bringing other open source frameworks based on jQuery to the party, such as Backbone.js, Knockout.js, Canvas.js or Require.js. This means it’s straightforward for you to inject your JavaScript code from your web app to build Windows Store apps and offer a new type of experience to your customers.
Check out MS Open Tech’s blog post to learn more about using open source code and frameworks to build apps for Windows devices.
–Olivier Bloch, Senior Technical Evangelist, MS Open Tech
* This post was modified 7/16 with an updated list of MS Open Tech supported frameworks.