I have heard that proper dlls created in VB6 do work.

One of the problems, and maybe you ran into this with your test, is that the function names get mangled. You need to specify a def file in Visual Studio.

I understand where MetaTrader is coming from. Bridging the Managed and Unmanaged gap is not an easy undertaking. For me, I am actually relieved they don't since that would prevent MetaTrader from running on Linux, OSX, etc. I have seen several other applications (Dreamweaver, for example) that allow .dll plugins but have the same restrictions. As far as not building an API, after all MetaTrader only exists for the brokers. People need to pressure their brokers for an API.

With a little help, it might not be too hard to develop a tool that takes a .net dll, creates c++ code from the dll that would call the .net dll and then automatically compile the c++ code.

Anyone interested?

Wow, that would be impressive! Sounds difficult to me - decompilation of the MSIL, then auto code generation of unmanaged C++ from the C# that will conform to MT4 nuances...

Am I missing something? I'd certainly love the tool, but I think its above my talents as a programmer...

-CS

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I agree. That is aiming a little too high. I will try and get the basic wrapping on a single method.

Not to difficult - and here is why:

1. http://blogs.msdn.com/deeptanshuv/ar...26/432870.aspx - says we can call managed code from unmanaged and gives the procedure for doing this. It seems to expose as COM interfaces the managed entry points.

2. There is some semi-automated methods for exposing COM functions through the use of pexports (especially for us MingW users).

3. Really this is only text parsing and spitting out new files to be passed into a defined compiler.

2. In addition, http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/04/C/ - shows the use of a manual wrapper class that exposes these Managed functions to non-managed code by automatically generating a dll. This may be the easier way to go....

The more important reason why this is attainable - a few smart coding specifications at RentACoder and we can have an off-shore team doing the coding for cheap.