[Mono-devel-list] accessing c++ library from a mono application

[Jonathan Pryor]

Yes.  There are three ways to do it:

1- The easy, proprietary way: Use Managed Extensions to C++ to wrap the
C++ library, exposing it to the CLI runtime.  The problem with this is
that Managed Extensions to C++ work only under Visual C++ (though this
may change), and the resulting binaries work only under .NET.

2- The portable, hard way: Write a C wrapper for the C++ library,
providing functions to create, destroy, and invoke methods of all the
C++ classes.  Then write a C++ wrapper of the C wrapper, which
DllImports the C functions and invokes them.

This is what Qt# does, AFAIK.

3- The portable, easy way: Use a wrapper generator such as SWIG
(http://www.swig.org), which will do all the wrapping for you.  This may
have some problems, however, including: (a) the C# support in SWIG is
still under development, and is only available in a development release
(1.3.19); (b) SWIG may not be able to understand all C++ programs and
wrap them properly; and (c) not everything is handled transparently.  An
interface definition (the functions prototypes of exported functions)
*may* need to be written, and templates will likely require special
attention.  See: http://www.swig.org/tutorial.html.

An example of this was posted to mono-list last December; see:

	http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-December/010101.html

 - Jon

On Fri, 2003-05-02 at 09:42, Sven Herzberg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>   is it possible to use a c++ library from a mono application?
> 
> Sven
> 
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