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Binding to C/C++ libraries or other system libraries is not something that's well documented, officially. On Windows there's a lot of 3rd party effort that is e

by R0b0t1 5y ago

Binding to C/C++ libraries or other system libraries is not something that's well documented, officially. On Windows there's a lot of 3rd party effort that is easily searchable. But for a long time the interop layer was not (and still may not be?) working on Linux. The first iterations of .NET were just for webapps. You could only work with and call .NET code, the only functions provided were basic IO and network.

nightski 5y ago
Hmm, I've been using .NET since beta 1 in 2000. Maybe you had access to earlier bits? It was never just about webapps. In fact, Windows Forms was meant as a more sane MFC if anything. Interop with native code was always very easy. From PInvoke to managed C++ there were a lot of ways to do it with ease. Things have changed but I still think this is one area where .NET has great support.
- emteycz 5y ago
  They probably mean .NET Core, it's somewhat true in that case.
immutology 5y ago
Native interop in .NET has always been via what they call "P/Invoke". On .NET Core, P/Invoke is cross-platform and you can also call .so/.dylib functions on Linux/MacOS just like you could always call .dll functions on Windows on .NET Framework before we had .NET Core. I'm curious to know what you needed to do with native libraries. I've been programming with .NET around 20 yrs and find it fairly rare that I need to use P/Invoke... But I'm sure it depends on what you're building.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I maintain a thingy written in C# that does cool things with keyboard backlights on System76 machines in Linux. Like make the left-third respond to CPU usage, right third blink when you have unread notifications, etc. The biggest one was turning off the keyboard when the screen blanked[1]. Almost all of the fun stuff requires native interop. 1: https://withinboredom.info/blog/2019/11/26/detecting-if-a-screen-is-turned-off-in-linux/ https://withinboredom.info/blog/2019/11/26/detecting-if-a-sc...
- ok123456 5y ago
  You end up using P/Invoke any time you need to control hardware. In the last few months I needed to use P/Invoke to control cameras, motors, and compute FFTs with the GPU. You need to use them if you need to control raw GDI objects like bitmaps.

by R0b0t1 5y ago

nightski 5y ago

Hmm, I've been using .NET since beta 1 in 2000. Maybe you had access to earlier bits? It was never just about webapps. In fact, Windows Forms was meant as a more sane MFC if anything. Interop with native code was always very easy. From PInvoke to managed C++ there were a lot of ways to do it with ease. Things have changed but I still think this is one area where .NET has great support.

emteycz 5y ago
They probably mean .NET Core, it's somewhat true in that case.

immutology 5y ago

Native interop in .NET has always been via what they call "P/Invoke". On .NET Core, P/Invoke is cross-platform and you can also call .so/.dylib functions on Linux/MacOS just like you could always call .dll functions on Windows on .NET Framework before we had .NET Core. I'm curious to know what you needed to do with native libraries. I've been programming with .NET around 20 yrs and find it fairly rare that I need to use P/Invoke... But I'm sure it depends on what you're building.

withinboredom 5y ago
I maintain a thingy written in C# that does cool things with keyboard backlights on System76 machines in Linux. Like make the left-third respond to CPU usage, right third blink when you have unread notifications, etc. The biggest one was turning off the keyboard when the screen blanked[1]. Almost all of the fun stuff requires native interop. 1: https://withinboredom.info/blog/2019/11/26/detecting-if-a-screen-is-turned-off-in-linux/ https://withinboredom.info/blog/2019/11/26/detecting-if-a-sc...
ok123456 5y ago
You end up using P/Invoke any time you need to control hardware. In the last few months I needed to use P/Invoke to control cameras, motors, and compute FFTs with the GPU. You need to use them if you need to control raw GDI objects like bitmaps.