Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows 0.5.0-preview.3

Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows

Network snapshots include AdapterIds from Network List Manager connections. Consumers can match these IDs to System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.Id to determine which adapters belong to a domain-authenticated network; network category alone does not establish adapter membership.

Host-independent Windows administration for .NET 10. Construct a capability client directly; no Runic Desktop, Application host, UI framework, dependency injection, automatic elevation or helper process is required.

This is a local implementation under native validation. Administrative write and domain scenarios have not been accepted on disposable fixtures. See verification for the distinction between implementation, executed checks and remaining acceptance work. Do not infer production readiness from a successful pack or NativeAOT publish.

Capabilities and prerequisites

The initial supported architecture is Windows x64. Automation COM bindings reject other architectures. Other native bindings have not been verified on ARM64/x86. The intended OS baseline is Windows 10/11 or Windows Server 2016 and later, subject to the consuming .NET 10 runtime's supported OS versions; this is not a claim that every server/version combination has been tested.

System.DirectoryServices.Protocols 10.0.10 is the only package dependency. Its native transport initialized and reported an unavailable endpoint from a NativeAOT consumer. LDAP paging/authentication/write behavior still needs the domain fixture.

API semantics

• Find returns null only for native absence. Enumeration errors are failures, not successful empty lists. Read models use immutable collections; write specifications are separate and selected updates use null to preserve a setting.
• WindowsAdministrationException retains operation, error category, native domain and numeric code. LDAP exceptions remain available as inner exceptions, including native diagnostic context. Do not log request models or credentials.
• Argument exceptions describe caller mistakes; PlatformNotSupportedException describes unsupported platforms. GPMC missing registration and missing WMI namespaces/classes are identifiable Unavailable failures.
• Creation fails on collisions except explicit replacement options. Deletion returns whether the resource existed. GPO display names are labels, not unique identities; creating a GPO allocates a new GUID.
• Mutations are not transactions. Multiple property setters may partially succeed. Inspect state after a failure before deciding what to retry. Cancellation before native execution prevents that operation; once an indivisible native mutation starts, its actual result is returned. A cancellation request never means rollback.
• Native COM runs on an owned apartment. The implementation does not set global COM security. WMI uses explicit per-proxy authentication and packet privacy. Native RPC/COM calls can outlive a cancellation request; LDAP timeouts and WMI query wait bounds are not universal hard deadlines.
• GetOperatingSystem exposes RegistryProductName verbatim; Windows can retain a Windows 10 compatibility label on Windows 11. GetOperatingSystemNameAsync reads the display name from native Windows inventory.
• Service BinaryCommandLine is the configured command line, not an executable path. Process observations are snapshots: a process may disappear after enumeration.
• Task snapshots retain complete native XML; selected updates preserve untouched XML subtrees. Replacing actions/triggers intentionally replaces those subtrees. Registration, scheduler state and last execution outcome are separate values.
• Firewall names can be ambiguous and have no public persistent GUID in this API. Use the returned identity for writes; changed/ambiguous identity fails. Updates retain unrelated native settings by editing the existing rule.
• DNS keys include full record data, not just owner name. Updating one record does not replace sibling records. Unsupported types are returned as Unsupported with native class and text; they cannot be written through the curated typed API. TXT data follows the DNS WMI provider's quoted textual representation.
• Share security descriptors retain SID/ACE information and ordering as native self-relative bytes. They represent share permissions, never filesystem ACLs.
• GPMC operation outcomes include its detailed status collection and checked overall HRESULT. Import overwrites settings in an explicitly selected destination GPO; restore uses the backup's original identity. No backup-selection heuristics, migration orchestration or SYSVOL file-copy implementation is included.
• Link reordering uses an LDAP assertion against the read gpLink value, preserving each entry's flags and rejecting concurrent changes instead of overwriting them.

The read surfaces are curated to the listed capabilities, not arbitrary native object cloning APIs. Use task XML for task settings outside the typed model. Selected updates must not be used to recreate an object from a partial snapshot.

Console examples

Examples cover each capability. The repository's examples/dotnet/Runic.Administration.Console is a package-only consumer with read-only commands. It can be copied outside this repository and restored from a local package; it has no source-tree or desktop-host references.

Local package and verification

From the SDK root:

dotnet run --project tests/dotnet/Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows.ApiTests -c Release -p:RunicToolkitBuildMode=Verification
dotnet run --project tests/dotnet/Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows.Tests -c Release -p:RunicToolkitBuildMode=Verification
dotnet publish tests/dotnet/Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows.Tests -c Release -r win-x64 -p:PublishAot=true -p:RunicToolkitBuildMode=Verification -o artifacts/administration/native-tests
& ./artifacts/administration/native-tests/Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows.Tests.exe

dotnet pack packages/dotnet/Runic.Platform.Administration.Windows -c Release -p:RunicToolkitBuildMode=Verification -p:PackageVersion=0.2.0-administration.local.2 -o artifacts/administration/packages
dotnet restore examples/dotnet/Runic.Administration.Console --source ./artifacts/administration/packages --source https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json
dotnet run --project examples/dotnet/Runic.Administration.Console --no-restore -- system

The API baseline records signatures, default parameters, enum values and init accessors; it is managed-only. Review intentional changes before running its --write-baseline option. Native verification roots the entire administration assembly so unexecuted public capabilities still receive AOT analysis. That analysis does not substitute for executing those capabilities on their fixtures.

Implementation provenance: new SDK implementations against Microsoft Windows SDK headers and documentation. Application repositories supplied behavioral requirements; application source/dependencies were not copied or modified.

Generated Windows bindings

All public capability clients now use CsWin32 for their Win32/COM interop: shell links, services/processes, tasks, firewall, domain discovery, inventory, networks, shares, internal WMI (including DNS), and GPMC. LDAP transport remains System.DirectoryServices.Protocols; generated Win32 declarations do not replace an LDAP transport. Runic's public models, validation and exception contracts remain handwritten and unchanged by this migration.

NativeMethods.txt lists the requested APIs. NativeMethods.json selects internal, unmanaged bindings with preserved HRESULTs. CsWin32 0.3.333 is a private build dependency. Generated source stays in build output and does not expose Windows SDK types in the public API. Calls use named methods, native structures and safe handle ownership; no runtime COM wrappers or warning suppressions were added.

There is no handwritten interop fallback. Shared validation, security-descriptor interpretation and COM initialization remain part of the generated-client paths.

The GPMC migration also corrects collection get_Item outputs to native VARIANTs, queries returned objects for their expected interface, and passes trustee strings to RemoveTrustee. These paths still require domain fixture execution.

Verification after migration: managed native checks and the 115-type public API baseline pass. The Windows x64 NativeAOT verifier publishes without warnings and its local run passed 9 checks, with 5 administrative checks explicitly skipped. This includes temporary shortcut roundtrips but no machine administration writes. GPO/LDAP/DNS fixture operations remain unaccepted until executed on a disposable domain.

Applicability to Runic.Platform.Windows

The sibling package now uses the same centrally pinned generator and private unmanaged bindings for WindowsFilePicker, preserving owner STA dispatch, cancellation and modal lifetime behavior.

Keep generation local to each package instead of adding an administration reference or exporting a shared low-level binding assembly. Share the dependency version and conventions, not unrelated capability implementations.

WindowsDesktopNotifications and its activation callback implement Windows Runtime interfaces. Microsoft's CsWinRT is the corresponding WinRT projection project; CsWin32 does not replace that projection.

Application adoption additions

WindowsGroupPolicyClient.EnumerateBackupsAsync(directory) enumerates all GPMC backups, including older backups, with IDs, display names, timestamps and comments. It needs local GPMC but no domain connection. The application selects a backup and passes its ID to ImportAsync; application naming and recency rules remain outside Runic.

DNS creation retains its explicit 3600-second default. Set DnsRecordSpecification.UseServerDefaultTimeToLive = true to omit TTL and let the Windows DNS provider select it, matching callers that previously omitted the optional native TTL argument. This option affects creation only; updates preserve the existing TTL unless changed.

NativeAOT checks cover backup cancellation and missing GPMC. Enumeration of populated backup directories and server-default DNS TTL require the disposable domain/DNS fixture; the verification CLI includes those checks. They have not been accepted on a domain VM yet.