Implement source generator for proposed System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling.GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute

[jkoritzinsky]

In the design doc for the COM source generator, we determined that we wanted to add a new attribute named System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling.GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute (name subject to change in API review) with the following tentative shape:

namespace System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling;

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Interface)]
public class GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute
{
    public GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute(Type comWrappersType);

    public GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute(Type comWrappersType, bool generateManagedObjectWrapper, bool generateComObjectWrapper);

    public Type ComWrappersType { get; };

    public bool GenerateManagedObjectWrapper { get; } = true;

    public bool GenerateComObjectWrapper { get; } = true;

    public bool ExportInterfaceDefinition { get; }
}

This attribute could also alternatively be a generic attribute so we as the source-generator authors don't need to handle validating the type passed to the constructor.

After discussing the design further, we also proposed adding a new public type that implements basic COM support around IUnknown as well as a ComWrappers-derived base class and an interface to help, possibly with the following shapes:

namespace System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling;

// This type represents the TypeKey concept. We wrap the Guid type here mainly to signify specific usage (effectively make a strong typedef)
public readonly record struct InterfaceId(Guid IID);

public class ComObject : IDynamicInterfaceCastable, IUnmanagedVirtualMethodTableProvider<InterfaceId>
{
    // Implement support for casting through IUnknown.
    // No thread-affinity aware support.
    // No IDispatch support.
    // No aggregation support.
}

public abstract class GeneratedComWrappersBase<TComObject> : ComWrappers
{
}

The user will use the attribute as follows:

[GeneratedComInterface(typeof(MyComWrappers))]
interface IFoo
{
    void Bar();
}

public partial class MyComWrappers : GeneratedComWrappersBase<ComObject>
{
}

This issues tracks the following components of the generator, each of which can be completed relatively independently:

• Implement the ComputeVtables method for MyComWrappers to return vtables for all interfaces with the [GeneratedComInterface] attribute that point at MyComWrappers that the provided object implements.
• Implement the CreateObject method to create an object of type ComObject around the provided external COM object.
  • Possibly generate a nested type that has optimized support for the provided interfaces (such as a cache where the expected interfaces have optimized access).
• Generate an DynamicInterfaceCastableImplementation-interface for the marked interface that provides the managed-to-unmanaged implementation based on the design and generator in Introduce a source generator for invoking methods on unmanaged vtables #68276.
• Generate a native vtable for the interface that implements the unmanaged-to-managed implemenation for when managed objects are passed to unmanaged code through the ComWrappers type.

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Issue Details

---

In the design doc for the COM source generator, we determined that we wanted to add a new attribute named System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling.GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute (name subject to change in API review) with the following tentative shape:

namespace System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling;

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Interface)]
public class GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute
{
    public GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute(Type comWrappersType);

    public GeneratedComInterfaceAttribute(Type comWrappersType, bool generateManagedObjectWrapper, bool generateComObjectWrapper);

    public Type ComWrappersType { get; };

    public bool GenerateManagedObjectWrapper { get; } = true;

    public bool GenerateComObjectWrapper { get; } = true;

    public bool ExportInterfaceDefinition { get; }
}

This attribute could also alternatively be a generic attribute so we as the source-generator authors don't need to handle validating the type passed to the constructor.

After discussing the design further, we also proposed adding a new public type that implements basic COM support around IUnknown as well as a ComWrappers-derived base class and an interface to help, possibly with the following shapes:

namespace System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshalling;

public class ComObject : IDynamicInterfaceCastable, IComObjectWrapper<ComObject>
{
    // Implement support for casting through IUnknown.
    // No thread-affinity aware support.
    // No IDispatch support.
    // No aggregation support.
}

public abstract class GeneratedComWrappersBase<TComObject> : ComWrappers
{
}

The user will use the attribute as follows:

[GeneratedComInterface(typeof(MyComWrappers))]
interface IFoo
{
    void Bar();
}

public partial class MyComWrappers : GeneratedComWrappersBase<ComObject>
{
}

This issues tracks the following components of the generator, each of which can be completed relatively independently:

• Implement the ComputeVtables method for MyComWrappers to return vtables for all interfaces with the [GeneratedComInterface] attribute that point at MyComWrappers that the provided object implements.
• Implement the CreateObject method to create an object of type ComObject around the provided external COM object.
  • Possibly generate a nested type that has optimized support for the provided interfaces (such as a cache where the expected interfaces have optimized access).
• Generate an DynamicInterfaceCastableImplementation-interface for the marked interface that provides the managed-to-unmanaged implementation based on the design and generator in Introduce a source generator for invoking methods on unmanaged vtables #68276.
• Generate a native vtable for the interface that implements the unmanaged-to-managed implemenation for when managed objects are passed to unmanaged code through the ComWrappers type.

Author:	jkoritzinsky
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-System.Runtime.InteropServices, Bottom Up Work
Milestone:	8.0.0

[jkoritzinsky]

The basic GeneratedComInterface attribute and source generator have been merged in to main, so I'm going to close this.