.NET Framework 4 Hosting Interfaces

This section describes interfaces that unmanaged hosts can use to integrate the common language runtime (CLR) in the .NET Framework version 4 and later into their applications. These interfaces provide methods for a host to configure and load the runtime into a process.

All .NET Framework 4 hosting interfaces have the following characteristics:

• They use lifetime management (AddRef and Release), encapsulation (implicit context) and QueryInterface from COM.

• There do not use COM types such as BSTR, SAFEARRAY, or VARIANT.

• There are no apartment models, aggregation, or registry activation that use the CoCreateInstance function.

In This Section

• ICLRAppDomainResourceMonitor Interface
  Provides methods that inspect an application domain's memory and CPU usage.

• ICLRDomainManager Interface
  Enables the host to specify the application domain manager that will be used to initialize the default application domain, and to specify initialization properties.

• ICLRMetaHost Interface
  Provides methods that return a specific version of the CLR, list all installed CLRs, list all in-process runtimes, return the activation interface, and discover the CLR version used to compile an assembly.

• ICLRMetaHostPolicy Interface
  Provides the GetRequestedRuntime method that provides a CLR interface based on policy criteria, managed assembly, version, and configuration file.

• ICLRRuntimeInfo Interface
  Provides methods that return information about a specific runtime, including version, directory, and load status.

• ICLRStrongName Interface
  Groups all existing Strong Naming Global Static Functions in the .NET Framework 2.0 that are exported by MSCorEE.dll (except StrongNameErrorInfo Function) into a single interface. All the ICLRStrongName methods return standard COM HRESULTs.

• ICLRTask2 Interface
  Provides all the functionality of the ICLRTask Interface; in addition, provides methods that allow thread aborts to be delayed on the current thread.

Related Sections

• .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1 Hosting Interfaces
  Describes the hosting interfaces provided with the .NET Framework versions 1.0 and 1.1.

• .NET Framework 2.0 Hosting Interfaces
  Describes the hosting interfaces provided with the .NET Framework versions 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5.

• Hosting (Unmanaged API Reference)
  Introduces hosting in the .NET Framework.