I'm going to create my first managed plugin for Unity (2018.2) using Visual Studio Community for Mac (7.6.11 build 9).
I've read the documentation but I think that the step-by-step instructions are not meant to be followed on Visual Studio Community for Mac.
As you can see in the screenshot below, I've created several projects using each and every library template available.
All of them compiled successfully to a DLL targeting versions of .NET framework that are incompatible with Unity.
The only project I could change the .NET framework version to match Unity's 3.5 is the one based on the Other > .NET > Library.
Everything works fine but I'd like to know if the assumptions, the process and the final result are correct. Can you tell me, please?
I don't know the difference between the "Class" and the "Class Library" option but you're supposed to use the "Class Library" option. This is not the main point of this answer.
Two future issues you haven't solved yet:
1. Referencing Unity's API.
If you ever have to use any Unity library or API in youir plugin such as Vector3, you need to add Unity's UnityEngine.dll to your library settings. If you don't, you will run-time exceptions.
Go to Project --> Add Reference ---> Browse ---> Browse Button
then select <UnityInstallationDirecory>\Editor\Data\Managed\UnityEngine.dll. You can now build your managed plugin. Since you're using Mac, this path is different on your OS. On Mac, this could be /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/Frameworks/Managed/UnityEngine.dll. You just have to find where UnityEngine.dll is located.
2. Invisible stack trace
With your current setup, if you run into error with your managed plugin, the stack trace won't be there. You won't have the file names and line numbers and this makes is very hard to debug your plugin code.
When you build the project, Visual Studio generates a PDB file instead of an MDB file. Unity can't use this directly. You have to convert the PDB files into MDB files.
From command line, run this:
<UnityInstallationDirecory>\Data\MonoBleedingEdge\lib\mono\4.5\pdb2mdb.exe UnmanagedPlugin.dll
Again, the path might be different on Mac, you just need to find "pdb2mdb.exe" that converts the PDB files into MDB files.
After that, copy the MDB and dll file into the "Assets" folder in your Unity project.
Related
I'm a bit of a noob on that topic so I'm searching for help. I need to install this library (https://github.com/twcclegg/libphonenumber-csharp) for a unity project where I need to check phone numbers.
But as I always made simple games in unity I really don't know how to do that and I don't really know either what to search to find an answer.
If anyone of you knows how to do it, it will really make my day.
Thank you
Once do a build on a project you want to use in Unity, then find the DLL output from the build. I recommend you do Release Builds, but for now if you are not familiar with Visual Studio just use what you were able to build. If there are multiple directories then you only need one - the best one to use would be any labelled ".NET Standard" which it seems you have a .net standard 2.0 directory.
Go to your Unity project in the Assets folder, and if there isn't already a Plugins folder create one. Then in Assets/Plugins create a folder named whatever you want for the library - in this case PhoneNumber would be fine. So you would have Assets/Plugins/PhoneNumber and you would copy/paste the contents of your NetStandard2 folder there.
In the end you should have Assets/Plugins/PhoneNumber/PhoneNumber.dll
As soon as you have that dll, you can switch back to Unity and see if it worked by checking the Unity Console for any Errors. You might receive errors saying it could not load the DLL. Almost always if it can not load the DLL it is because of missing dependent DLLs - which is why I said to copy the entire folder contents inside the "NetStandard2" folder since it may contain more than just PhoneNumber.dll - it may have it's necessary dependent dlls also.
If not, you can read the error output and hopefully get a clue as to what dependent dlls are missing. You can also expand the Dependencies in Visual Studio.
Typically the DLL failing to be loaded in Unity is because of missing dependent DLLs. Expanding the Dependencies, which is found under the project name in the Solution Explorer window on the right side of Visual Studio, will show you what libraries it requires. Most of what you see under dependencies (if not all) will require a similarly named dll. Under the netstandard2.0 dependency I see System.Collections.Immutable - so you may need a System.Collections.Immutable.dll which should (usually) be in the output folder when you build the project. You would also need that dll in Unity in your PhoneNumber folder along with PhoneNumber.dll
I have a problem with the MWArray.dll which is the original dll library from mathworks compiled from Matlab. This dll works under visual studio but not under unity. The goal was to compile under matlab a simple function mycos which calculates a cosinus and uses it under unity with the second dll MWArray mathworks library.
I made a test under Visual Studio and it works well. I have no problem to read the dll and make a call to the mycos.dll class. I made a typical c# project with two references on MWArray and mycos.
But when I try under unity, by putting the two dll under a plugins folder and configure unity 2018 on .NET 4.0 because the dll are compiled with the .NET framework 4.0.
Unity can read the dll but when running I get an error:
NotImplementedException: The requested feature is not implemented.
System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent (Boolean ifImpersonating)
(at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Security.Principal/WindowsIdentity.cs:166)
If I want to use matlab for a research project which was coded in matlab with advanced high level math functions which going to be difficult to recode under unity with c#. So the easy way is to use compiled package from matlab compiler. So is there someone who did this already?
The solution consists in NOT using MWArray.dll in Unity project because of incompatibility with Mono. Create a Visual Studio project (when creating new select the type "console applicatiion"), it MUST be separated from unity project directory, and use it as an application server; in fact in that app you can use MWArray.dll, remember that you have to configure your project configuration to x64!!! In the Unity project create a client app to communicate with the other server project.
I installed Unity 2017 with Visual Studio 2017. I am attempting to add an external DLL to the Visual Studio project through the solution explorer. When I right click on References, the "Add Reference" option is completely missing!
I'm trying to use NpgSQL. Hence, the need to add npgsql.dll.
Can anyone give light?
The Add Reference... is in a different place in this case.
Things to do in Unity:
Create a folder named Plugins as a child to your Assets folder. (Assets\Plugins...)
Next copy your DLL to this plugins folder. You can do this using Windows Explorer or just drag it into the folder in the Unity editor, like shown:
Things to do in Visual Studio:
Click on Analyzers in your project as shown below, then click Project from your menu, then navigate to Add Reference...:
Now Browse to your DLL:
And... there it is:
Accepted Brien's answer (Thank you, Brien!).
I'm adding my own answer pertinent to Npgsql.dll, because it's apparently a common problem all over the internet with poor documentation. If you got here from google about Npgsql.dll then read on:
Unity (for some unknown reason) comes bundled with it's own npgsql.dll inside of the application mono/2_0 folder. Some people have reported conflicts with this.
Many of the npgsql.dll versions currently do not work with Unity. Attempting to include them in Unity's assets will cause Unity to throw a Type error. This is what caused me to think that I needed to add the file as a reference in C#. This is why I came here and asked the question about Add Reference. But, with Unity, this was simply wrong on my part.
As far as I can tell, Unity insists on managing all project properties and references for you. Both managed and unmanaged DLLs must be added via Unity assets. Even Visual Studio project properties cannot be changed within Visual Studio for Unity. And if you attempt to edit the .csproj files (for instance to disable compiler warnings), Unity will overwrite the .csproj files completely next time you load your Unity project.
Anyone who has problems getting Npgsql.dll to work in Unity needs to use the proper Unity workflow where you drop npgsql.dll into Unity assets. If you get errors, it's an npgsql.dll version conflict. Try other versions of the dll first.
This gentleman has provided a Unity specific build to resolve a namespace conflict (Just pull the dll from the bin folder on the Github link):
Unity NPGSQL.DLL
Unity 2017 currently allows you to change to .NET 4.6 as an experimental setting. Some people have toyed with using that setting to get newer versions of npgsql.dll to work properly, but they report intermittent results. For now, I solved my problem with Unitynpgsql.dll. It's an older build, so hopefully I won't run into any features I need that it doesn't support. If so, I'll probably just work around them.
To anyone else trying to make npgsql.dll work in Unity: do not despair, just try to resolve the version conflicts. Also here is another relevant recent thread about it:
Barebones Master Server Npgsql.dll Issue - January 2018
I'm not a a very experienced Windows developer, so I hope this all makes sense.
I created a Managed Assembly DLL using Visual Studio 2010. The DLL (Plip.dll) contains a C++ class that is using System.IO.SerialPort class to do some simple communication over a serial port.
In a second Visual Studio project I created a simple GUI that uses the class found in Plip.dll. In my GUI project I have the line : #using "Plip.dll" . In the Project Properties I set the 'Resolve #using References' value to the correct location of Plip.dll. The GUI builds just fine. If I copy the GUI.exe and Plip.dll to the same folder, the GUI runs just fine on my computer.
The problem I am having is that when I copy both files to a second computer, I cannot get the GUI executable to run. I get the following error : "System.IO.FileNotFoundException. Could not load file or assembly "Plip.dll" Vesion=.... ". I get this error even though both the exe and dll are located in the same folder.
Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue? Is there some option I need to set in my GUI project to load the DLL correctly at run time?
I suppose the problem is not the Plip.dll, but it's dependencies.
Use Dependency Walker on the second computer to see if it needs any other dll's (they might be installed in System folder or in %PATH% on your development computer, but not on the other).
If this second computer doesn't have Visual Studio installed, you are probably missing Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (you need to install it on the other computer)
Also make sure that you compile in Release because debug builds need debug dependencies.
I found the answer to this problem to be much simpler than Dependency Walker (but admittedly, that was fun to look at).
In my case, the issue was a mis-match between the .DotNet versions in the DLL and with the application's .net version. This was caused by building the "class library" using .DotNet 6.0 (dot net core?).
Instead, the entire class needed to be re-built using "Class Library (.NET Framework)"
enter image description here
I wrote an article on this problem.
https://keyliner.blogspot.com/2022/09/visual-studio-c-linked-dll-exception.html
I have developed a Win32 Console app DLL and a small tester application for it. As far as I know neither uses MFC, .COM, .NET or dot-anything else. Development platform is VS2009 on WinXP/SP3
When I give the DLL and EXE to someone else, they are unusable. Attempting to use them generates errors similar to "Application cannot be used, the application configuration is wrong." and "cannot find xxx.dll" (not exact wording on these error messages).
I have learned from reading that there are dependencies that must ship with the EXE and DLL. These dependencvies seem to be specific to VS 2009 abd should include the MSVCRT09, etc.
When I followed MS's instruction to make a setup.exe/MSI installer for a Setup and Deployment Project (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235317%28v=VS.90%29.aspx) I add the dll to the project, move it to the "MyLibrary" folder and no dependencies are found or listed in the Solution Explorer. Yet, I know there are dependencies, DEPENDS.EXE says so.
Can anyone walk me through this or name a better site with instructions. Once again, MS's help isn't all that helpful.
thanks,
Wes
Visual Studio 2008 is version 9.0. A program built with Visual C++ 2008 normally does have dependencies on the C run time library MSVCRT09, as you discovered. If the C run time library is not installed on the destination PC (either already installed or as part of your setup project) then your application fails, as you discovered. It is no surprise that DEPENDS.EXE displays the dependency. The only question seems to be why Visual Studio 2008 doesn't display the dependency in its Solution Explorer window.
Before building your Visual Studio setup project (MSI and setup file), Visual Studio might not have had any reason yet to search for dependencies. But after the setup project is built, in my experience the Solution Explorer does show the dependencies it found, next to other dependencies that you set explicitly. If those don't show up after building, something is weird.