Help!? extern stdcall -> to managed code.

[Vlad Ivanov]

I have an application that makes an _stdcall to an exported function within
a DLL called "CreatePluginInstance".

What i am trying to do - is to write an adapter in C++ that will export the
required "CreatePluginInstance" function and internally proxy all the calls
to an assembly written in VB.Net

And i hit a wall - as soon as i enable managed extensions in C++ - the resulting
DLL's extern "C" _stdcall CreatePluginInstance exported function cannot be
called any longer. But i need the managed extensions to be able to load the
assembly!

So how can i have exported functions and calls to managed assembly in the
same component? It seems to be either/or. Please let me know if this is possible.
The only way i see this can be done - is to call the dotnet assembly using
COM interop without using managed extensions. But i specifically want to
avoid that due to performance reasons - and want to proxy the data into managed
assembly directly.

Can this be done?

[Rob Teixeira]

You can use P/Invoke to get at the function (not COM interop, though they
have similarities).

Only BLT'able types can be marshaled directly (types that have the same physical
structure in managed/unmanaged code, such as simple numerics).

An easier way of doing all this may be to head over to Desaware. They have
a component that does this for you, and I believe they just released it for
.NET.

-Rob


"Vlad Ivanov" <nomail@nomail.com> wrote:
>
>I have an application that makes an _stdcall to an exported function within
>a DLL called "CreatePluginInstance".
>
>What i am trying to do - is to write an adapter in C++ that will export
the
>required "CreatePluginInstance" function and internally proxy all the calls
>to an assembly written in VB.Net
>
>And i hit a wall - as soon as i enable managed extensions in C++ - the resulting
>DLL's extern "C" _stdcall CreatePluginInstance exported function cannot
be
>called any longer. But i need the managed extensions to be able to load
the
>assembly!
>
>So how can i have exported functions and calls to managed assembly in the
>same component? It seems to be either/or. Please let me know if this is
possible.
>The only way i see this can be done - is to call the dotnet assembly using
>COM interop without using managed extensions. But i specifically want to
>avoid that due to performance reasons - and want to proxy the data into
managed
>assembly directly.
>
>Can this be done?
>
>