Can you write C++ wrappers in C# instead of using C++/CLI?

Question

I'm attempting to access C++ code from a managed .NET app. To do so, I'll need to write .NET wrappers for the unmanaged C++ classes I need, in C++/CLI.

If C++/CLI compiles to plain old CIL, then why can't you write the same wrapper class in C# using an unsafe class, since C# supports pointers as well?

Is it because the C++/CLI compiler is different from the C# compiler and can reference native C++ code while C# can't?

If I can, I'd like to, because I'm more familiar with the C# syntax than with C++.

Answer 1

You can (try) and with sufficient effort, you can probably make things work; even w/o resorting to unsafe code. But I think you'll find the C++/CLI syntax for interop situations sufficiently similar to C#.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this approach however is the long-term maintenance of your interop layer. Every time something changes on the C++ side, you could have to manually make changes to C#. And you won't get much help from the C# compiler alerting you to such things. It's only at runtime when the mangled C++ name can't be located in the DLL that you'll know.

It's can also be error-prone to re-implement C++ .H files in C#, especially if you need the same code to work for both 32-bit and 64-bit.