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Most libraries that wrap a native API also wrap native resources. In .NET terminology, a can be defined as a native pointer or a handle that is obtained from a native operation and that requires another native operation for cleanup. As discussed in Chapter 10, a managed wrapper for a C++ class needs a field that points to the wrapped object. In this case, this field is a managed resource, because for resource cleanup, the native object must be deleted via this field. If you wrap a C-based library like the Win32 API, you usually have to define fields of handle types (e.g., handles for named pipes or for database connections) in your managed wrapper class. Since allocated handles require cleanup, too, they are also native resources. Ensuring that native resources are cleaned up in a reliable way is a task that is much more complicated than it seems at first.

Most C++/CLI use cases discussed in this book are based on mixed-code assemblies. This chapter will give you a solid understanding of what is going on behind the scenes when a mixed-code assembly is started. Not only is the knowledge you’ll get from this chapter helpful for understanding how C++/CLI works, but it can also be important for troubleshooting C++/CLI-related problems.