Tutorial: Install native dependencies in a CLR application

C++/CLI is a technology that lets you combine .NET classes with native C++ types to create libraries and applications that take C++ code and make it accessible to .NET programs.

You can use vcpkg in combination with C++/CLI to install and consume C++ dependencies in your projects targetting the Common Language Runtime (CLR).

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

• Build a sample C++/CLI project
• Add a C++ native dependency
• Build the application

Prerequisites

• vcpkg
• Git
• Developer Powershell for Visual Studio
• Visual Studio with the following components:
  • C++ development workload
  • C++/CLI support component

Build a sample C++/CLI

In this tutorial, we will start from an existing C++/CLI application and add a C++ dependeny installed with vcpkg. The commands in this tutorial assume that you're running them in a Developer PowerShell for Visual Studio.

1 - Clone the sample repository

The first step is to get a copy of the C++/CLI sample application in the .NET samples repository. The C++/CLI sample application is located in the core/interop/cpp-cli folder.

git clone https://github.com/dotnet/samples

2 - Navigate to the sample application folder

cd samples/core/interpo/cpp-cli

2 - Check that the project builds and runs correctly

The sample repository contains a solution with four projects:

• ManagedLibrary: A C# library for .NET
• MixedLibrary: A library mixing native C++ code and .NET code from ManagedLibrary
• NativeApp: A C++ application that consumes .NET code from MixedLibrary
• ManagedApp: A C# application that consumes C++ code from MixedLibrary

Run the following command to build the solution's projects:

msbuild CPP-CLI.sln -restore

If the build fails make sure that you have installed the required components for Visual Studio listed in the Prerequisites section, and that you meet the minimum requirements of .NET 5.0 SDK or later and Visual Studio 2019 16.8 or later] of the sample application.

Once built, you can run ManagedApp.exe

./bin/Debug/x64/ManagedApp.exe

The program produces the following output:

=== Managed class ===
Hello from ManagedClass in MixedLibrary
Hello from NativeClass in MixedLibrary
-- message: from managed app!

=== P/Invoke ===
Hello from NativeEntryPoint_CallNative in MixedLibrary
Hello from NativeClass in MixedLibrary
-- message: from managed app!

3 - Open the project in Visual Studio

In the next steps we will modify the library to use fmt to print messages to the console. The fmt library will be installed via vcpkg and linked in the consuming projects.

To edit the source files, open the CPP-CLI.sln solution in Visual Studio:

start CPP-CLI.sln

Once the solution has been opened in Visual Studio you may get a prompt to retarget the project to the latest versions. You can click OK to upgrade the Windows SDK Version and Platform Toolset to latest.

project's target Windows SDK Version and Platform Toolset version to the latest version.

Add a C++ native dependency

Next, we will be making the following changes to the MixedLibrary project.

• Add a vcpkg manifest to acquire fmt.
• Enable vcpkg in the project.
• Modify the NativeClass::Hello to use fmt to print messages.

1 - Create a vcpkg manifest

Right-click on the NativeLibrary project and click on Add > New Item in the context menu.

Name the new item vcpkg.json, this is the vcpkg manifest file, and make sure that the file is created in the root of the project's folder.

2 - Add fmt as a depedency

Open the vcpkg.json file and edit its content to match the following:

{
  "dependencies": [ "fmt" ]
}

If the vcpkg manifest file is located in the right location and you try to build the project, you will get the following warning:

The vcpkg manifest was disabled, but we found a manifest file in samples\core\interop\cpp-cli\MixedLibrary\. You may want to enable vcpkg manifests in your properties page or pass /p:VcpkgEnableManifest=true to the msbuild invocation.

3 - Enable vcpkg in MixedLibrary's properties

Open the MixedLibrary's properties page by right-clicking on the project and clicking the Properties option.

Change the following properties in the vcpkg section:

• Use Vcpkg set to Yes
• Use Vcpkg Manifest set to Yes
• Instal Vcpkg Dependencies set to Yes
• Use AutoLink set to Yes
• App-locally deploy DLLs set to Yes

required to enable vcpkg

With these changes Visual Studio will now read the vcpkg.json file and automatcally install the dependencies contained in the manifest before building the project.

While in the Properties page, we also want to enable the /utf-8 flag to make fmt build correctly.

In the Command Line subsection of the C/C++ settings edit the Additional Options to include /utf-8 in the

Finally, click OK to close the Properties page.

4 - Verify vcpkg is working

If everything is correctly configured, Visual Studio will invoke vcpkg to install your dependencies before building the MixedLibrary project.

1>Installing vcpkg dependencies to  C:\path\to\samples\core\interop\cpp-cli\MixedLibrary\vcpkg_installed\x64-windows\
1>"C:\path\to\vcpkg\vcpkg.exe" install --x-wait-for-lock --triplet "x64-windows" --vcpkg-root "C:\path\to\vcpkg\" "--x-manifest-root=C:\path\to\samples\core\interop\cpp-cli\MixedLibrary\" "--x-install-root=C:\path\to\samples\core\interop\cpp-cli\MixedLibrary\vcpkg_installed\x64-windows\"

If you don't see vcpkg output, or if fmt fails to build, make sure that you followed the steps above correctly, including adding /utf-8 in the Additional Options in C/C++ > Command Line.

4 - Modify the project's source code

Finally, we want to modify the MixedLibrary.cpp file to use fmt to print messages to the console. Make the following changes to the source code:

1 - Include the fmt/printf.h header (on line 5).

#include <iostream>
#include <vcclr.h>
#include <fmt/printf.h>

2 - Modify the NativeClass::Hello function to use fmt::println (on line 44).

void MixedLibrary::NativeClass::Hello(const wchar_t *msg)
{
    auto ws = std::wstring(msg);
    auto str = std::string(ws.length(), 0);
    std::transform(ws.begin(), ws.end(), std::back_inserter(str), [](wchar_t c) { return static_cast<char>(c); });
    fmt::println("Hello from NativeClass in MixedLibrary");
    fmt::println("-- message: {}", str);
    fmt::println("-- printed using FMT version {}", FMT_VERSION);
}

Build the application

The NativeClass::Hello function is used in the ManagedApp project to print a message to the console using C++ code. The changes above make it so that the fmt library is consumed in the CLR application.

No changs to the application's project are needed, just build and run the ManagedApp project.

The output of the program should look similar to this:

=== Managed class ===
Hello from ManagedClass in MixedLibrary
Hello from NativeClass in MixedLibrary
-- message: from managed app!
-- printed using FMT version 110002

=== P/Invoke ===
Hello from NativeEntryPoint_CallNative in MixedLibrary
Hello from NativeClass in MixedLibrary
-- message: from managed app!
-- printed using FMT version 110002

Next steps

Also learn about other useful features:

• Manifest mode
• vcpkg export
• Versioning