GammaLib.NET 2023.9.11

Gamma

With C#s incredibly disappointing support for importing unmanaged libraries, I have decided to write a wrapper to import and marshal unmanaged types into managed code. In other words, I would like to introduce Gamma! An all new, niche library I am working on to interop with native libraries.

Supported Platforms

Gamma supports both Windows and Linux, with hopeful future support for OSX!

Keep in mind that on linux, Gamma needs the C standard libraries to be installed to run!

Dependencies

• Windows: <a href="https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/">Visual Studio Community 2022</a> (Make sure to download the C/C++ tools!) (Or your C compiler of choice)
• Linux: GCC (or your C compiler of choice)

Getting Started

First lets write our C program!

mylib.c

//Linux
int GetInt()
{
    return 5;
}

//Windows
__declspec(dllexport) int GetInt()
{
    return 5;
}

Now we compile:

Windows (Keep in mind your DLL needs to be for the same architecture as your C# program! See here):

Open x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022 (You can literally just search for this in Windows)(Why in the world does this have such a long name?)

Now type:

cl /LD mylib.c

Linux:

gcc mylib.c -o libmylib.o
gcc mylib.o -shared -o libmylib.so

And now we are ready to create our C#!

Windows:

using(LibImporter import = new LibImporter("mylib.dll"))
{
    NativeDelegate<int> getint = import.LoadFunc("GetInt");
    int foo = getint.Invoke();

    Console.WriteLine(foo);
}

Linux:

using(LibImporter import = new LibImporter("libmylib.so"))
{
    NativeDelegate<int> getint = import.LoadFunc("GetInt");
    int foo = getint.Invoke();

    Console.WriteLine(foo);
}

As Seen In

• <a href="https://github.com/grimtin10/Rainbow/">Rainbow (Grimtin10, YendisFish)</a>