4 ms·

How exactly would you link a C library to a .NET application? Apart from compiling it using something like ilcc, that is.

WorldMaker 9y ago
.NET has always had a foreign function interface (FFI) system called P/Invoke [1] or Platform Invoke. You build a DLL and ask the .NET runtime through metadata to load that DLL for you and call the functions you need. It's not entirely cross-platform, but it is possible. Example: https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/09/14/pinvoke-in-net-core-rhel/ https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/09/14/pinvoke-in-net... More details in the .NET Standard: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/native-interop https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/native-inte... [1] One interesting reference site: https://www.pinvoke.net/ https://www.pinvoke.net/
- juliangoldsmith 9y ago
  I'm aware of P/Invoke. I'm pretty sure that's how the ADO.NET wrapper to SQLite works. GP was referring to statically linking a native binary to a .NET application, and as far as I know, there's no way to do that.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    I was curious. One approach is apparently to include it as a binary resource, extract it to temporary space at runtime, then P/Invoke: https://stackoverflow.com/a/768429 https://stackoverflow.com/a/768429 That seems a bit much to simulate static linking, but doesn't sound like it would be too noticeable to users.
    - juliangoldsmith 9y ago
      That's an interesting technique, and would certainly work. You could probably even make it cross-platform that way.
- Someone 9y ago
  That isn’t that simple. https://www.sqlite.org/download.html https://www.sqlite.org/download.html has separate libraries for 32-bit and 64-bit windows, and you have to write code to figure out what DLL to load (see http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/faq.wiki#q12 http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/faq.w...) Nowadays, you mostly can ignore x86, but I guess you still hit similar problems if you want your code to run on Windows for ARM, .NET core on Linux, etc.

WorldMaker 9y ago

.NET has always had a foreign function interface (FFI) system called P/Invoke [1] or Platform Invoke. You build a DLL and ask the .NET runtime through metadata to load that DLL for you and call the functions you need. It's not entirely cross-platform, but it is possible. Example: https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/09/14/pinvoke-in-net-core-rhel/ https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/09/14/pinvoke-in-net... More details in the .NET Standard: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/native-interop https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/native-inte... [1] One interesting reference site: https://www.pinvoke.net/ https://www.pinvoke.net/

juliangoldsmith 9y ago
I'm aware of P/Invoke. I'm pretty sure that's how the ADO.NET wrapper to SQLite works. GP was referring to statically linking a native binary to a .NET application, and as far as I know, there's no way to do that.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  I was curious. One approach is apparently to include it as a binary resource, extract it to temporary space at runtime, then P/Invoke: https://stackoverflow.com/a/768429 https://stackoverflow.com/a/768429 That seems a bit much to simulate static linking, but doesn't sound like it would be too noticeable to users.
  - juliangoldsmith 9y ago
    That's an interesting technique, and would certainly work. You could probably even make it cross-platform that way.
Someone 9y ago
That isn’t that simple. https://www.sqlite.org/download.html https://www.sqlite.org/download.html has separate libraries for 32-bit and 64-bit windows, and you have to write code to figure out what DLL to load (see http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/faq.wiki#q12 http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/faq.w...) Nowadays, you mostly can ignore x86, but I guess you still hit similar problems if you want your code to run on Windows for ARM, .NET core on Linux, etc.