Skip to content

Add note about registering TLB #41907

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 2 commits into from
Jul 26, 2024
Merged

Add note about registering TLB #41907

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
8796f7b
Add note about registering TLB
AaronRobinsonMSFT Jul 25, 2024
ed0937a
Update docs/core/native-interop/expose-components-to-com.md
AaronRobinsonMSFT Jul 25, 2024
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
4 changes: 3 additions & 1 deletion docs/core/native-interop/expose-components-to-com.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -73,14 +73,16 @@ The resulting output will have a `ProjectName.dll`, `ProjectName.deps.json`, `Pr

Open an elevated command prompt and run `regsvr32 ProjectName.comhost.dll`. That will register all of your exposed .NET objects with COM.

If you intend to [embed a type library (TLB)](#embed_tlb), it's recommended to also define functions using [`ComRegisterFunctionAttribute`](/dotnet/api/system.runtime.interopservices.comregisterfunctionattribute) and [`ComUnregisterFunctionAttribute`](/dotnet/api/system.runtime.interopservices.comunregisterfunctionattribute). These functions can be used to register and unregister the TLB for the COM server. For a complete example, see the [`OutOfProcCOM`](https://github.com/dotnet/samples/tree/main/core/extensions/OutOfProcCOM) sample.

## Enabling RegFree COM

1. Open the `.csproj` project file and add `<EnableRegFreeCom>true</EnableRegFreeCom>` inside a `<PropertyGroup></PropertyGroup>` tag.
2. Build the project.

The resulting output will now also have a `ProjectName.X.manifest` file. This file is the side-by-side manifest for use with Registry-Free COM.

## Embedding type libraries in the COM host
## <a name="embed_tlb"></a> Embedding type libraries in the COM host

Unlike in .NET Framework, there is no support in .NET Core or .NET 5+ for generating a [COM Type Library (TLB)](/windows/win32/midl/com-dcom-and-type-libraries#type-library) from a .NET assembly. The guidance is to either manually write an IDL file or a C/C++ header for the native declarations of the COM interfaces. If you decide to write an IDL file, you can compile it with the Visual C++ SDK's MIDL compiler to produce a TLB.

Expand Down