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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Just in the way
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While reading this post from Sam Gentile, all I could think was this - the type system is just standing in the way of productivity:
This is freaky stuff-) I have been doing some experimenting while putting together my Adavanced COM Interop talk for VSLive! today. Of course it can't be possible for the Type Library Exporter to export a Generic Type to a COM type since there is no concrete type. It doesn't make sense. I wanted to see what happens anyhow in ILDASM. What about if I use a Generic Interface and then instantiate a class implementing the generic interface with a concrete type such as double? That should export and it does. BTW, I am using the evil ClassInterface.AutoDual instead of the correct way to export with the ClassInterface.None as it doesn't export with the interface. It looks like the Type Library Exporter is doing the right thing. It skips the generic interface and keeps going as there could be (and are) other types.
Go read the whole thing, and see what kind of unnatural acts the type system of COM can lead you into...