Marshalling .NET generic types

Question

Here is a C# program that tries Marshal.SizeOf on a few different types:

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
class AClass { }

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] 
struct AStruct { }

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
class B { AClass value; }

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
class C<T> { T value; }

class Program
{
    static void M(object o) { Console.WriteLine(Marshal.SizeOf(o)); }

    static void Main()
    {
        M(new AClass());
        M(new AStruct());
        M(new B());
        M(new C<AStruct>());
        M(new C<AClass>());
    }
}

The first four calls to M() succeed, but on the last one, SizeOf throws an ArgumentException:

"Type 'C`1[AClass]' cannot be marshaled as an unmanaged structure; no meaningful size or offset can be computed."

Why? Specifically, why does SizeOf choke on C<AClass>, but not on B or on C<AStruct>?

---

EDIT: Because it was asked about in the comments, here's the "real-world" problem that inspired this mostly-academic question: I'm calling into a C API that is basically one C function that operates on (pointers to) lots of different types of simple C structures. All contain a common header followed by one field, but the type of that field is different in different structures. A flag in the header indicates the type of the field. (Strange, yes, but that's what I have to work with).

If I could define a single generic type C<T> and a single C# extern declaration M(C<T>), and then call M(C<int>) on one line, and M(C<double>) on another, I'd have a short and sweet interop solution. But given JaredPar's answer, it appears that I have to make a separate C# type for each structure (though inheritance can provide the common header).

Answer 1

Generics as a rule are not supported in any interop scenario. Both P/Invoke and COM Interop will fail if you attempt to marshal a generic type or value. Hence I would expect Marshal.SizeOf to be untested or unsupported for this scenario as it is a marshal-specific function.

Answer 2

It is not known what size the aggregated object T would have (it would be the size of a pointer if T is a referenece type and mostly any value if it is value type).

I think you can solve this problem by setting the MarshalAs attribute on the field 'value' specifying the most matching type (for example, Unmanagedtype.SysInt). Note that it still won't work for so-called non-mappable types (i.e. types for which fields offsets and sizes can't be deduced easily).

But AFAIK, it's not recommended to use generics in interop.