using System;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Reflection.Emit;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace ConvertTypeLibToAssembly
{
    public class App
    {
        private enum RegKind
        {
            RegKind_Default = 0,
            RegKind_Register = 1,
            RegKind_None = 2
        }
    
        [ DllImport( "oleaut32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, PreserveSig = false )]
        private static extern void LoadTypeLibEx( String strTypeLibName, RegKind regKind, 
            [ MarshalAs( UnmanagedType.Interface )] out Object typeLib );
        
        public static void Main()
        {
            Object typeLib;
            LoadTypeLibEx( @"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxC.dll", RegKind.RegKind_None, out typeLib ); 
            
            if( typeLib == null )
            {
                Console.WriteLine( "LoadTypeLibEx failed." );
                return;
            }
                
            TypeLibConverter converter = new TypeLibConverter();
            ConversionEventHandler eventHandler = new ConversionEventHandler();
            //AssemblyBuilder asm = converter.ConvertTypeLibToAssembly( typeLib, "Interop.Virtualbox.dll", 0, eventHandler, null, null, null, null );
            AssemblyBuilder asm = converter.ConvertTypeLibToAssembly(typeLib, "Interop.VirtualBox.dll", TypeLibImporterFlags.SafeArrayAsSystemArray, eventHandler, null, null, "VirtualBox", null); //using assembly name "VirtualBox" and SafeArrayAsSystemArray to be compatible to VisualStudio-Generated Interop-Assembly

            asm.Save("Interop.Virtualbox.dll");
        }
    }

    public class ConversionEventHandler : ITypeLibImporterNotifySink
    {
        public void ReportEvent( ImporterEventKind eventKind, int eventCode, string eventMsg )
        {
            // handle warning event here...
        }
        
        public Assembly ResolveRef( object typeLib )
        {
            // resolve reference here and return a correct assembly...
            return null; 
        }    
    }
}

9 Responses to “VirtualKD 2.8 with VirtualBox 4.2”

1. Bevan Collins says:

   March 12, 2013 at 7:57 pm

   Thanks for that

2. Matt says:

   June 19, 2013 at 9:19 pm

   For those of us who don’t have a C# dev environment handy, and don’t want to go through the pain of trying to get Visual Studio downloaded, installed, deconflicted with older versions, etc., can you post the compiled output? Thanks!

3. Julian de Navascues says:

   June 20, 2013 at 9:26 am

   Thank you, it works great!

   For me failed with .NET Framework 4.0 and worked with 2.0.

4. Darren says:

   July 21, 2013 at 11:42 am

   For me, typelib seems to be filled with nothing but null right after LoadTypeLibEx, and as a result ConvertTypeToLibAssembly just hangs in an infinite loop.

   This seems to only happen with .NET Framework 2.0, but not 4.0.

   Interesting bug, tried to debug it and find the source of the issue with no success. Guess I’ll just downgrade my VirtualBox!

5. Norbert says:

   December 22, 2013 at 11:55 am

   Thanks guys. I finally got it working for VirtualBox 4.3 that way as well.

   The essential point is to switch the project to .NET Framework 2.0 (like Julian said). The strange thing is, that with 4.0 it takes a split second to create Interop.Virtualbox.dll. But with 2.0 it took a really long time (5 Minutes or more).

   So, like Daren, I thought it got stuck in an infinite loop or something. But it does finish. You just have to give it some time.

6. Norbert says:

   December 22, 2013 at 1:12 pm

   Ah, I am sorry. I spoke to soon. The Interop.Virtualbox.dll was created correctly and the automatic integration into VirtualBox worked. But starting a VM fails with following error:

   “The version of the device registration structure is unknown to this VBox version. Either mixing incompatible versions or the structure isn’t correctly initialized. (VERR_PDM_UNKNOWN_DEVREG_VERSION).”

   I guess, VirtualKD-2.8 isn’t compatible with VBox 4.3.

7. MB says:

   June 27, 2015 at 6:12 pm

   Regarding: “For those of us who don’t have a C# dev environment handy, and don’t want to go through the pain of trying to get Visual Studio downloaded, installed, deconflicted with older versions, etc., …”

   Just use the copy of the C# compiler that’s installed on your system by the .NET Framework:

   C:\Users\bamf>cd C:\Users\bamf\Documents\VirtualKD-2.8

   C:\Users\bamf\Documents\VirtualKD-2.8>\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\csc.exe vbox42.cs
   Microsoft (R) Visual C# Compiler version 4.0.30319.34209
   for Microsoft (R) .NET Framework 4.5
   Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

   C:\Users\bamf\Documents\VirtualKD-2.8>

   For more details, see: http://baileysoriginalirishtech.blogspot.com/2015/01/this-one-weird-trick-visual-studio-team.html

8. Dagnamit says:

   August 4, 2015 at 11:53 pm

   Successful build (Visual Studio 2013 Professional), new error when selecting “Integrate automatically” in VirtualKDSetup.exe.

   “Could not load file or assembly ‘Interop.VirtualBox, Version=1.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null’ or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the current loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.”

9. Nutter says:

   August 24, 2015 at 4:27 pm

   For vBox 5.0 and vKD 2.8 I tried building with both .Net 2 and .Net 4 and received Dagnamit’s error “Could not load file or assembly ‘Interop.VirtualBox, Version=1.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null’ or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the current loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.”