c++/cli wrapper question

Question

Is there a recommended way to wrap a native c++ library by c++ cli?

Answer 1

Not sure if one size fits all, but yeah, it is largely a mechanical process. Your ref class wrapper should declare a private member that's a pointer to your native C++ class. Create the instance in the constructor. You'll need a destructor and a finalizer to delete that instance again.

Then for each function in the native C++ class you write a managed version of it. That's almost always a one-to-one call, you simply call the corresponding native method and let C++ Interop convert the arguments. Sometimes you have to write a bit of glue code to convert a managed argument to the native version of it, particularly if your native method uses 8-bit char* or structure arguments.

You'll find that standard pattern in code in my answer here. I also should mention SWIG, a tool that can automate it. Not sure how good it is, never used it myself.