# microsoft/go-winio

Win32 IO-related utilities for Go

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/go-winio
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/go-winio
Language: Go
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-30T20:52:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 68/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 100, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3868, "days_push": 3, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1075, forks 216 (observed 2026-09-01T02:14:04.937582+00:00)

## What it is
A Go library from Microsoft providing Win32 IO utilities, focused on named pipes and file handles, including using named pipes as a net transport. It uses IO completion ports for non-blocking IO on Windows Vista and newer.

## Use cases
- use named pipes as a network transport in Go on Windows
- perform non-blocking Win32 file IO from Go
- communicate with Windows services over named pipes
- build Windows container tooling that talks to named pipes
- access low-level file handles efficiently in Go

## When to choose
- you need named pipe or Win32 handle IO in a Go program on Windows
- you want non-blocking IO that integrates with Go's goroutine scheduler
- you're building Windows-specific infrastructure like Docker/container components

## When to avoid
- your application is cross-platform and doesn't need Windows-specific IO
- you only need standard network sockets or regular file IO
- you need to support Windows versions older than Vista

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: file-system, networking, concurrency
- domain: developer-tools, windows, operating-systems
- platform: windows, go
- tags: named-pipes, win32, io-completion-ports, go-library

## Member repositories
- microsoft/go-winio (main) score 68

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-09-01T02:14:04.937582+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:53:32.549789+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/microsoft/go-winio (fetched 2026-09-01T02:14:04.937582+00:00, sha 10a9fedf331f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.