Re: [Mono-list] Managed C++ assemblies and Mono

[Patrick Hartling]

Sergey Chaban wrote:

As long as it is only the initialization code, the few routines that are
used can be faked, so that should be no problem.

I think the problem here is finding managed entry point.
Say, C++ compiler generates _mainCRTStartup() entry, this is embedded
x86 code, how would you find managed entry without interpreting mainCRTStartup?
You can't rely on the naming, because even though managed entry for MC++ would
be called "main", it's just a convention - some .NET obfuscators already replace
this with something else. Well, unless I'm missing something :-)

For my case, I am worried more about the "entry point" into the native library. That is, within a Managed C++ wrapper class, any calls made to heap-allocated instances of unmanaged C++ code. That is where the problems occur.

BTW, to produce pure IL from C++ code the following options needed for the linker
(assuming that -clr option is already used for the compiler):
$link -nodefaultlib -entry:main mscoree.lib

Thanks, I'll check the options being used when the assembly is linked.

But anyway original question was about using MC++ to interact with C++ libs compiled
to _native_ code, if I understood the post correctly. I think in such case a C interface and
P/Invoke would be a much better choice.

I would agree that for a native C interface (e.g., GTK+), that would be better. From what I have seen of P/Invoke, however, it seems undesirable for use with a C++ API due to all the static methods. What it really comes down to is that I want to write a class in C# that implements an interface defined in unmanaged C++. An instance of the C# class would be passed through to unmanaged C++ code. There are a lot of details involved with this, but the inherent object-oriented nature does not seem to lend itself well to the structure of P/Invoke-style code.

-Patrick


--
Patrick L. Hartling | Research Assistant, VRAC
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | 2624 Howe Hall: 1.515.294.4916
http://www.137.org/patrick/ | http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/


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