Question

I need to gain some run-time information about a C++ program, which is kinda difficult due to C++ not offering some sophisticated reflection mechanism. Now, my approach is to compile the C++ code using /clr and to reflect over the resulting assembly from C# (simply because I like that language more than C++).

While this is all turning out more or less fine, I’m now stuck at a point where I need to actually run the program by calling its main method. Which is kind of frustrating considering how far I got already…

This is the C++ program in question:

#include "systemc.h"
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

// Hello_world is module name
SC_MODULE (HelloWorld) {
    SC_CTOR (HelloWorld) {
        // Nothing in constructor 
    }
    void HelloWorld::say_hello() {
        //Print "Hello World" to the console.
        cout << "Hello World.\n";
    }
};

//sc_main in top level function like in C++ main
int sc_main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
  HelloWorld hello("HELLO");
  hello.say_hello();
  string input = "";
  getline(cin, input);
  return(0);
}

Nothing fancy, really…

This is the C# method used to inspect the resulting assembly:

System.Reflection.Assembly ass = System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom(filename);

System.Console.WriteLine(filename + " is an assembly and has been properly loaded.");

Type[] hello = ass.GetTypes().Where(type => type.Name.ToLower().Contains("hello")).ToArray();
Type[] main = ass.GetTypes().Where(type => type.Name.ToLower().Contains("main")).ToArray();

Now, while the hello Type-array contains the HelloWorld class (or at least I assume that it is that class), the main var contains three types, all of which deal with doMAINs (ie have nothing to do with the sc_main method I’m looking for). I assume that it has something to do with it not being public, but declaring it a static public member function of the HelloWorld class doesn’t work either since the function is expected to be a non-member function to be found. Or am I just overlooking something terribly stupid?

Answer 1

No, it doesn’t. You need to learn how C++/CLI works- you can’t just recompile a C++ program with /CLR and be done with it. The sc_main method here is native, not managed, and you can’t reflect over it, and the same is true about the HelloWorld type, unless you redefined it to be a ref class, but I doubt you did because there you go in main instantiating it by value, which would only be legal if it was a native class.

.NET and native code have very fundamentally different semantics and a magic compiler switch will not help you in this regard.