APISet
APISet is a Windows mechanism that provides an indirect naming layer between public API surface names and the actual DLLs that implement those APIs. It introduces a namespace of API set names, many of which appear as DLLs with names beginning api-ms-win-, used by the Windows loader during module binding. The goal is to decouple the exported API surface from a specific binary, enabling modular updates and better compatibility across Windows versions.
When a binary imports an API set name, the Windows loader consults the API set schema to
API set entries define a mapping from a logical API set namespace to one or more target
Originating as part of Windows’ modularization and side-by-side architecture, API sets are a background feature of