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Adding a new managed class to Rotor (that interacts with the EE)

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I haven't actually posted anything technical to this blog yet - so I figured I'd hack
together a piece of source (with the internal help of the CLR devs) that illustrates
something semi-cool, yet can be extended by those that are interested in continuing
the work. The source diff shows how to add a managed class to Rotor that fcall's in
to the runtime and extracts runtime information we wouldn't otherwise have access
to. The diff is here
[addNewFCall.diff]. I've also included C# code to use the new functionality here
[rotorfcallexamplecs.zip].

Very brief overview of the diff

The managed class we're adding is called MethodBody, and hangs off the System.Reflection
namespace. The idea is get information about a method's metadata at runtime, in this
case, we're getting the methods maximum stack size, as defined in the ECMA Partition
II spec. We achieve this by reflecting over a method using MethodInfo, getting it's
handle and calling on our new class to do the work. Remember, you'll need to have
a look at the diff to get a complete understanding of what we're trying to do, but
here's the quick overview:

We modify \bcl\sources to include the MethodBody.cs file we're defining below,
so that it can be compiled into mscorlib.dll.

**

\bcl\system\reflection\MethodBody.cs

namespace System.Reflection
{

   using System;

   using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

   using CultureInfo
= System.Globalization.CultureInfo;

[Serializable()]

   public sealed class MethodBody

{

     
private int maxStackSize;

      //
only called from within the EE

     
private MethodBody() {}

     
public int MaxStackSize
{ get { return maxStackSize;
} }

}

}

We get the MethodBody of a method through the MethodHandle of a MethodInfo object.
MethodHandle is a struct defined in runtimemethodhandle.cs in the bcl\reflection directory.
We add our GetMethodBody() call here:

**

\bcl\system\runtimemethodhandle.cs

[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall)]

public extern MethodBody
GetMethodBody();

Then we define the fcall hookup in \vm\ecall.cpp:

\vm\ecall.cpp

static

ECFunc gCOMMethodHandleFuncs[] =

{

...

{FCFuncElement("GetMethodBody", NULL, (LPVOID) COMMember::GetMethodBody)},

};

Now we define the unmanaged GetMethodBody class:

\vm\commember.h

class MethodBody
: Object

{

   private:

MethodBody() { }

MethodBody(MethodBody &r) {}

   public:

      INT32 maxStackSize;

};

...

Define where the work will happen:

\vm\commember.h

static FCDECL1(MethodBody*, GetMethodBody,
MethodDesc **ppMethod);

And the real work. The unmanaged implementation of GetMethodBody. This code grabs
what we need, and fills the managed class with all the info, making a working MethodBody
object with the correct MaxStackSize of the method.

\vm\commember.cpp

FCIMPL1(MethodBody *, COMMember::GetMethodBody,
MethodDesc **ppMethod)

{

MethodDesc* pMethod = *ppMethod;

METHODBODYREF MethodBodyObj = NULL;

HELPER_METHOD_FRAME_BEGIN_RET_0();

   GCPROTECT_BEGIN(MethodBodyObj);

TypeHandle thMethodBody(g_Mscorlib.FetchClass(CLASS__METHOD_BODY));

MethodBodyObj = (METHODBODYREF)AllocateObject(thMethodBody.GetMethodTable());

Module* pModule = pMethod->GetModule();

COR_ILMETHOD_DECODER MethodILHeader(pMethod->GetILHeader(), pModule->GetMDImport(),
TRUE);

MethodBodyObj->maxStackSize = MethodILHeader.GetMaxStack();

GCPROTECT_END();

   HELPER_METHOD_POLL();

HELPER_METHOD_FRAME_END();

   return (MethodBody*)OBJECTREFToObject(MethodBodyObj);

}

FCIMPLEND

Remember, the brief overview is just that, brief. To achieve a working implementation,
you'll need to tell the runtime a bit more about what you're doing. Check out/apply
the diff to have a real look under the hood.

I'd love to see someone extend the MethodBody managed/unmanaged class to retrieve
the method body IL in say... Byte[] array format? Any takers? Feel free to post it
in the comments section. ;)

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