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How to dynamically load a managed (.Net) DLL in unmanaged code?
I’m creating a plugin system in C++ that gets injected into an application and I would like to be able to write C# plugins.
I’ve searched a bit but could only find COM loading (with #import), but I don’t know how to do that at runtime, if it’s possible.
The C# DLL (Plugin) could call functions in the C++ DLL (Plugin Manager).
I would prefer a solution that doesn’t require me to compile the C++ DLL with /clr.
There are multiple issues here.
At some level, to use a C# DLL, you’ll need to bootstrap the CLR. Using /clr has a huge advantage – you can provide a truly managed API for the C# plugin to work against.
Your main other options are to either use COM, and provide a COM based API. This will work fine from C# as well as other languages, and take care of loading the CLR for you. The only other API is to self-host the CLR using the hosting APIs. This provides you the most control, but is definitely a fair amount of extra work.