more like a current position, not a direction

i have not had many hours to work the last few days, but i think i have come up with a plan..

i am not going to bother with any wpf or xaml or anything not in a default .net 2.0 installation. this will allow me to ship an intermediate product to robotengineer. right now it is called servotalk. basically it is a tool that lets you make a model out of servos. you'll then be able to use it to control your real servos like a puppet.

this just so happens to be exactly what i am making for my robot. who the hell would buy such a thing? well, there is a good chance that the whole 3 people out there that would probably read servo magazine. niche, niche. anyway. i need it and it is always good to have a reason to shine up a project for real. it'll also give me a chance to release early (often!).

i decided that i am going to use c++/cli + forms. i just feel like programming in c++ (ish) and not c# right now.

one of the "features" of servotalk will be that it is extensible so that it can support a wide variety of servo controllers. i am going to accomplish that by compiling code on the fly with the CodeDomProvider.

anyway, here's how you can abuse the clr to do your extensibility bidding.. i am subclassing a compiled c++ class from a c# source file and instantiating the it at runtime.. CRAZY!

it is a mess as i just barely got it working (mostly), so tough.

Code:

#include "servotalk.hpp"

#include <cassert>

using namespace servotalk;

namespace Lame
{
public ref class LameWindow : public Form
{

public:

virtual void cheese()
{
   MessageBox::Show("cheese");
}

};
}

Object^ deserialize_object_from_codedomprovider_stream(CodeDomProvider^ provider,Stream^ stream,StringWriter^ errorStream)
{
assert(provider!=nullptr);
assert(stream!=nullptr);

CompilerParameters^ params=gcnew CompilerParameters();
params->ReferencedAssemblies->Add("System.dll");
params->ReferencedAssemblies->Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll");
params->ReferencedAssemblies->Add("servotalk_debug.exe");
params->GenerateInMemory=false;

StreamReader sr(stream);
String^ source=sr.ReadToEnd();
//MessageBox::Show(source);

CompilerResults^ compilation=provider->CompileAssemblyFromSource(params,source);
if(compilation->Errors->HasErrors)
{
   String^ errorStr=gcnew String("");

   errorStr+=compilation->Errors->Count.ToString() + " Errors:";
   for (int x=0;x<compilation->Errors->Count;x++)
   {
      errorStr+= "\r\nLine: " + compilation->Errors[x]->Line.ToString() + " - " + compilation->Errors[x]->ErrorText;
   }

   MessageBox::Show(errorStr);

   if(errorStream!=nullptr)
   {
      errorStream->Write(errorStr);
   }

return nullptr;
}

return compilation->CompiledAssembly->CreateInstance("MyNamespace.MyClass");
}

[STAThreadAttribute]
int main(array<System::String ^> ^args)
{
String^ sourceStr = " \
   using System; \
   using System.IO; \
   using System.Windows.Forms; \
   namespace MyNamespace \
   { \
      public class MyClass : Lame.LameWindow \
      { \
         public override void cheese() \
         { \
            MessageBox.Show(\"Cheese Donkey\"); \
         } \
      } \
   } \
   ";

MemoryStream sourceMS;
StreamWriter sourceSW(%sourceMS);
sourceSW.Write(sourceStr);
sourceSW.Flush();
sourceMS.Flush();
sourceMS.Position=0;
Object^ obj=deserialize_object_from_codedomprovider_stream(gcnew CSharpCodeProvider(),%sourceMS,nullptr);
Lame::LameWindow^ window=dynamic_cast<Lame::LameWindow^>(obj);
window->cheese();
window->Show();

while(window->Created)
{
   Application::DoEvents();
}

return 0;
}

this is just a rehash/remix of random csharp code you might find on the inet, but the proof of concept seems to work.