VC++ 2005: IDE Tips and Tricks

Wonderful interview. VERY interesting stuff here guys. I really learnt a trick or two.

If a VS VC++ team member drops by this thread, I would like to know if there is any information, good or bad, about support for VC++ being added to the VS Class Designer (as supported for C#, VB.net etc).

BenZilla wrote:

Really good interview.

You guys should put up some kind of cheat sheet with the most usefull keyboard commands somewhere.

Trackerball, I was definitely not trying to skirt the issue, it's more that I was not always expecting those questions  The short answer to your question is this:

- a managed class (ref class A {}) can only hold pointers to native types
- a native class (class B {}) can not hold a managed handle directly, instead you should use gcroot<T> as follows:

#include <vcclr.h>
using namespace System;

class B {
public:
   gcroot<String^> str;   // can use str as if it were String^
   B() {}
};

int main() {
   B b;
   b.str = gcnew String("hello");
   Console::WriteLine( b.str );   // no cast required
}

I hope that answers the question. If you want to learn more, I gave a talk about interop at Tech-Ed and I have some posts about it over at http://blogs.msdn.com/borisj.

-- Boris