curtnichols/spike-dotnet-load-native

Prototype/spike - #fail - Dynamic library loader for .NET Standard

dotnet-load-native

Dynamic library loader for .NET Standard

This is a prototype or spike for creating a runtime loader for native functions into managed .NET Standard code. It is a riff off of https://github.com/mellinoe/nativelibraryloader.

At issue is loading libraries based on both platform and 32- and 64-bit-ness. The DllImport attribute doesn't get us there.

Conclusion

In the end, I don't think the solution contained in this repo is something to pursue. I think it's more managable to create an interface of a cohesive set of functions, then create one concrete type for each supported platform/bitness; the concrete type then has it's own DllImport allowing it to differentiate on platform and bitness. Finally, a small factory is needed to fetch the appropriate concrete type based on platform and bitness.

Now that I think of it, that assumes virtualness on p/invoked methods, which seems highly unlikely. So, no proven method yet.

Related Content

Handling p/invokes for different platforms and discussions about dllmap Discussion of the topic in the dotnet coreclr repo.

The .NET Native Tool Chain A discussion of the Marshaling Code Generator (MCG) exists here.