When we talk about the .NET platform, people often complain about the same things:Speed
Garbage collection
No backward compatibility with C or C++
While the first two topics are very well discussed, today I will talk about a relatively unknown feature of the .NET platform: IJW. What is IJW?First, IJW stands for "It Just Works", and, at the very first level, it enables you to compile existing C/C++ projects in MSIL, and "It Just Works" ;). To use it, simply add the /clr compiler option, or set the "Common Language Runtime support" option of your project to "Common Language Runtime Support (/clr)". It's as simple as that. Of course, why recompile an entire C++ project into MSIL when it's working already? Well, the force of IJW is more in the managed/unmanaged interoperability. Let's take a look at what it can offer you with a simple case: mine. A sample problemAt work, we heavily use remoting to abstract the network transportation layer, and we were very happy with it. Then one problem came: we use some software to handle our sensors and processing dataflow. This software basically allows you to make "components" that you load in it, and then use them. The problem is, the format for a component is very specific and has to be made in C++ (using the provided source generator). So, to overcome this problem, I designed a simple .NET 2.0 library (using generics) and component that use global shared memory and Win32 events to allow IPC between the software process and the .NET process. While this technique works very well, the drawbacks were huge because you couldn't use the remoting functions you needed when you wanted to and were forced to adopt a certain communication convention. Really, it was a pain sometimes, especially when dealing with pointers. Then I came to see IJW. Read more: Codeproject
Garbage collection
No backward compatibility with C or C++
While the first two topics are very well discussed, today I will talk about a relatively unknown feature of the .NET platform: IJW. What is IJW?First, IJW stands for "It Just Works", and, at the very first level, it enables you to compile existing C/C++ projects in MSIL, and "It Just Works" ;). To use it, simply add the /clr compiler option, or set the "Common Language Runtime support" option of your project to "Common Language Runtime Support (/clr)". It's as simple as that. Of course, why recompile an entire C++ project into MSIL when it's working already? Well, the force of IJW is more in the managed/unmanaged interoperability. Let's take a look at what it can offer you with a simple case: mine. A sample problemAt work, we heavily use remoting to abstract the network transportation layer, and we were very happy with it. Then one problem came: we use some software to handle our sensors and processing dataflow. This software basically allows you to make "components" that you load in it, and then use them. The problem is, the format for a component is very specific and has to be made in C++ (using the provided source generator). So, to overcome this problem, I designed a simple .NET 2.0 library (using generics) and component that use global shared memory and Win32 events to allow IPC between the software process and the .NET process. While this technique works very well, the drawbacks were huge because you couldn't use the remoting functions you needed when you wanted to and were forced to adopt a certain communication convention. Really, it was a pain sometimes, especially when dealing with pointers. Then I came to see IJW. Read more: Codeproject
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