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Win32 is itself a layer on top of the syscalls, and already provides much of the functionality of the C standard library.

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Yes, that was partly my point.

You can get reduced executable size and a lack of dependencies on various msvc*.dlls, without giving up much of the functionality of the C standard library and without having to write it all yourself.

Fine, but you get this thanks to already being linked with these megagodzillas like kernel32.dll. Try without them.

A program which isn't linked against the Win32 stuff is an invalid program, since syscalls in Windows are not at all stable.

On windows nt, ntdll gets loaded in all processes, it's hardcoded in the kernel (http://gate.upm.ro/os/LABs/Windows_OS_Internals_Curriculum_R...). That's where the loader resides, so you can't go without it. And that's where all the Zw/Nt* functions/ i.e. where the syscalls are.

So you can't really go without it.

Except the new picoprocesses, which don't get ntdll (or anything really, I guess).

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