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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T09:29:15+00:00

Let’s say I have a C++/CLI assembly compiled with the /clr switch. In that

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Let’s say I have a C++/CLI assembly compiled with the /clr switch. In that assembly, there are managed classes which call unmanaged (plain C++) classes defined in the same assembly. When you are debugging using Visual Studio, and you look at the call stack, it shows you where Managed->Unmanaged and Unmanaged->Managed transitions happen.

So, what caught my eye: Why is there no Managed/Unmanaged transition when one of the managed classes calls one of the unmanaged classes from the same assembly? Are those unmanaged classes somehow turned into managed classes behind the scenes?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Probably because you didn’t tell the compiler that you wanted the ‘unmanaged code’ to compile to machine code. With /clr in effect, all code gets compiled to IL. It has no trouble with standard C++ code, there are just a few language constructs that are not supported.

    If you mixed the code in a source code file then you can use a #pragma to switch:

    #pragma managed(push, off)
// Unmanaged code here
// ...
#pragma managed(pop)

// Your ref classes here
// ...

    You’ll need this too if you #include any headers that contain unmanaged code declarations.

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