If anybody would be man enough (heh) to write a managed c++ wrapper for lsapi.dll, allowing .NET modules to be written. I know that a lot of people (for some incomprehensible reason) don't like .NET, I think the ability to write modules in it ( especially since it will be part of longhorn by default) would be a real boon. I took a look at doing it, but my knowledge of c++ is, well, minimal, and my knowledge of Marshalling is insufficient to figure out how to call lsapi directly (I'm positive it's possible). Even a COM version would make module programming more accesible.

What benefit in using .NET ?

You don't need C++ to use lsapi. It's plain C.

I would imagine that .NET would be quite useful if you only knew C# or VB, and I gather that the ability to use LSAPI from .NET would let you create modules in these languages. Well, they couldn't be complete modules in themselves unless you can export standard C functions (in which case this whole thing would likely be unnecessary), but you could have second class modules using a proxy.

But I don't have the knowledge, motivation, or time to do this myself. So I guess for now I'll just wish you luck. :/

Longhorn will be only in 2006

Hah, finally noticed the replied email after all this time.

The key word there was not C++, but managed. I thought at the time that managed c++ exported functions and such the same as c# and vb.net did. It turns out I was wrong, but it is a possibility in the upcoming new version/replacement for managed c++. So I guess for now this is a pipe dream. Oh well.