Icebox for .NET 4.0?

[Gravitas]

Currently, as icebox is built for .NET 3.5, it cant host .NET 4.0 .dlls. In addition, if you want to run icebox on an small Amazon EC2 machine (which is always 32-bit), icebox wont work: its a 64-bit build.

So: is it poassible to download a version of ICE that supports .NET 4.0, and provides separate 32-bit and 64-bit builds of icebox? If not, what are
the steps to build this myself from source?

[xdm]

Hi

Currently, as icebox is built for .NET 3.5, it cant host .NET 4.0 .dlls.

You can host .NET 4.0 services in iceboxnet, using an application configuration file for iceboxnet.exe.

iceboxnet.config.exe

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
 <startup>
   <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" />
 </startup>
</configuration>

if you want to run icebox on an small Amazon EC2 machine (which is always 32-bit), icebox wont work: its a 64-bit build.

Ice binary distribution provide icebox 32 and 64 builds, in bin and bin\x64 directories respectively, note that icebox is used to load C++ services, for .NET you use iceboxnet that is a .NET application.

[Gravitas]

Thank you for explaining how to use iceboxnet with .NET 4.0 .dll's.

However, I can't seem to find the x32 version of "iceboxnet.exe".

Here is the output from corflags in the x32 folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\ZeroC\Ice-3.4.1\bin>corflags iceboxnet.exe
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework CorFlags Conversion Tool.  Version  4.0.30319.1
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Version   : v2.0.50727
CLR Header: 2.5
PE        : PE32
CorFlags  : 1
ILONLY    : 1
32BIT     : 0
Signed    : 0

As you can see, its a 64-bit build.

Here is the output from corflags in the x64 folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\ZeroC\Ice-3.4.1\bin\x64>corflags iceboxnet.exe
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework CorFlags Conversion Tool.  Version  4.0.30319.1
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

corflags : error CF002 : Could not open file for reading

As you can see, there is no file in the x64 folder.

So, to fix this problem, you need to:

1. Shift the x64 build of "iceboxnet.exe" from the x32 folder into the x64 folder.
2. Create a x32 build of "iceboxnet.exe" and put it into the x32 folder.

As an aside, I think you should display some meaningful error when the user attempts to load a .NET 4.0 .dll into "iceboxnet.exe". I just assumed that it was impossible, as the error message did not indicate the source of the problem, and nothing else worked except for recompiling a .NET 3.5 .dll (I also spent a lot of time trying to diagnose this problem).

[xdm]

As you can see, there is no file in the x64 folder.

There is only bin\iceboxnet.exe because it is a .NET application. We provide 32/64 for C++ services/libs.

For .NET the same executable run 32/64 bit mode. The 32BIT flag you show, is to force to run iceboxnet.exe in 32bit mode in a 64 bit OS.

[Gravitas]

Thanks, I understand now. As an aside, I tried compiled a .NET 4.0 version by downloading the source and running nmake. It worked, however, its probably just as easy to use a custom .config file on the official release.