A registry-free In-Process COM server

The sample is composed of

• a "RefreeNetCom" .NET 10.0 COM In-Process server (supports x86 or x64)
• a native x86, x64 console client written in C++
• a .NET Framework x86 or x64 console client written in C#
• a VB6 x86 client (only works when compiled as an .exe)
• a VBScript x86, x64 client
• and Excel VBA x64 client

Everything is reg-free. All clients can call the .NET Server. Build RefreeNetCom for x86 to test x86 clients, build RefreeNetCom for x64 to test x64 clients. PS: you may have to build twice for all projects to build sucessfully.

There's a similar Out-Of-Process COM server project available here: RegfreeNetComServer

Reg-Free COM is here based on a Type Library .TLB file (RegfreeNetCom.tlb) present aside the all clients .exe (no TLB is embedded in this sample). Both .NET and C++ projects have a specific app.manifest file that declares that type library.

Sadly, there's no tooling in Visual Studio C# projects to build .tlb files from .idl (there is only in Visual Studio C++ projects!), so the C# project references an extra GetWindowsSDKPaths.targets file (to gather various Windows SDK and Visual studio paths), plus some extra lines in the .csproj to do that automatically.