如何从C＃系统托盘应用程序中将C程序作为线程运行？

Question

I have a C console application which used to be run in the foreground in a CMD terminal in Windows and take user keystroke inputs. However it now needs to be moved to the background and requires no user input.

I have created a system tray, which is implemented correctly with a right click exit and right click about. And have a terminal program which does the functionality.

Rather than rewritting the program again I would like to be able to create a thread which calls the functions from my existing program which are do not require the terminal.

Just to stress the point the console interactive aspects have been removed from the code as have the applications response to keystrokes etc. Hopefully this clarifies things slightly.

Question: Is this possible? And how would I be able to implement this?

(I am generally not a PC programmer using more embedded C so .NET is quite foreign to me. Any help is greatly appreciated)

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this is what you are asking, but if you are asking if you can call functions from your C program from a C# application, then you can. So long as you have the source code to your C program. In order for functions in C to be available to a C# program, they must be exported. I will show you an example:

MyAddDll.h

#include <iostream>

extern "C"
{
    __declspec(dllexport) int Add(int a, int b);
}

Whats important here is that your function is wrapped in an extern "C" block. Basically, this tells the compiler not to mangle the name of your function. The other important piece is __declspec(dllexport) . This tells the compiler that you want to export this function so it can be called from another program (like your C# program).

MyAddDll.cpp

#include <iostream>
#include "MyAddDll.h"

extern "C"
{
    __declspec(dllexport) int Add(int a, int b)
    {
        return (a + b);
    }
}

Again, your code gets wrapped in an extern "C" block and you need to add __declspec(dllexport) to the function. Now you can compile this either into a DLL file or an EXE file. Now to call it from C#, its pretty straight forward:

MyProgram.cs

class Program
{
    [DllImport("c:\\PathToMyDllOrExeFile\\MyAddDll.dll")]
    public static extern int Add(int val1, int val2);

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        int val1 = 12;
        int val2 = 4;
        Console.WriteLine("{0} + {1} = {2}", val1, val2, Add(val1, val2));
    }
}

That's all there is!

One "gotcha" though is make sure your C program and your C# program are both compiled as either 32-bit or 64-bit. You can't compile your C program as 64-bit and your C# program as 32-bit. They must both be using the same bit length.

Answer 2

As already posted, you could use the Process.Start from your C# application tray.

    // Uses the ProcessStartInfo class to start new processes, 
    // both in a minimized mode. 
    void OpenWithStartInfo()
    {
        ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("IExplore.exe");
        startInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Minimized;

        Process.Start(startInfo);

        startInfo.Arguments = "www.northwindtraders.com";

        Process.Start(startInfo);
    }

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/53ezey2s(v=vs.110).aspx

You could try launching it on a hidden state: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.processwindowstyle(v=vs.110).aspx

Some programmers are telling to be careful. If any input is expected, then probably your process might halt. make sure nothing really stops your program.

You could try to start a cmd command with Process.Start also, but I would say it is just too much. This would start another process without your C# tray application control:

 Process.Start("start /min cmd /c mycommand");

Answer 3

You could start your C program from .NET code via System.Diagnostics.Process. It will be run in a separate process.

You can kill the process from .NET code as well