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WinForms - Any way to convert UI of Visual C++ project to Visual C#?

I'm now done with a .NET WinForms project in C++. I'm using Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition.
So from my experience so far and after a little bit of research, I find C# to be more clean, easy and more popular way to make the best out of the .NET framework. I found many straight forward references online for many problems in C#, which I had to struggle to achieve in C++. Also, C# gives me faster builds and it has pretty easy resource management.
So for the above reasons, I'd really like to port my current C++ project to C#. I know I'll have to translate the logical code, but is there a way to take atleast my GUI, ie My Forms directly into the C#'s designer? Or am I only left with the option of Designing the whole UI again from scratch?
Any help will be very appreciated, Thanks a lot for taking your precious time for me.

You could use a decompiler like ILSpy or Reflector. You should be able to decompile your assemblies in C#. With little effort or much, depends how big your project is, you could switch from Managed C++ to C#. Some Decompiler Addins allows to completly write the assembly to disk.
But you lose information with this approach. Basically comments, sometimes you gain goto's, get some compiler generated stuff and so on. But with the InitializeComponent() Method you should be fine.

C# SDK for non-IDE Java developer

I've been playing with Java for years as a means of developing quick and easy tools for repetitive tasks. I am not a true "developer" in the traditional sense, but I have lots of experience creating a wide assortment of tools and PoCs.
Unfortunately for me, I have noticed many shops are specifically looking for experience with C#, and not so many for Java. Even here on SO, there are more questions and more followers to C# related issues than Java. My preference will always be Java over C# simply for the cross-platform compatibility, but since the languages are so similar, I believe it would be beneficial for me to cross-train. I have already dabbled in other languages and scripts (VB and other BASIC flavors, Javascript, VBScript, ASP, JSP, PHP, etc.) so adding another isn't out of the question.
My current Java environment simply consists of a text editor (primarily jEdit for its plugins and layout) and homemade scripts to compile/jar my projects. I don't like to use IDEs because I want full control over my code and don't want a program writing code for me. (I also prefer to write my own code as opposed to using any sort of external library/package, if feasible. It helps me learn and greatly reduces unnecessary code.)
Therefore, what are my options for a non-IDE C# SDK? Libraries are obviously not that important to me. I've heard of Mono, which appears to separate the functions, but haven't tried it yet. What other SDKs exist that are similar to a simple Java SDK combined with a text editor?

Using an IDE doesn't have to mean anything writing code for you. I'm not generally keen on designer-generated code, but unless you decide to use a designer (or snippets etc), Visual Studio won't be writing code for you. Of course it will create a skeleton class for you when you create one, add the appropriate method signatures when you implement an interface etc - but is that boilerplate really something you want to write yourself?
I'd also suggest that your policy of not using external libraries is a bad one. I agree that it's useful for educational purposes to sometimes reimplement something, but it means that the code quality is likely to end up being worse... why would you not want to use code that has already been used and improved by many other people? Yes, you need to be careful about what libraries you use - but you really don't want to do everything yourself... not if you want to be productive, anyway.
I often use a text editor and command line myself for simple test code (e.g. for Stack Overflow questions) but I wouldn't dream of doing that for "real" code that I plan to keep.

Honestly, a lot of C# and .NET is about learning the tools; Visual Studio gives you a lot that you wouldn't be able to do with a text editor. There's a free version, and I highly suggest you check it out! People hiring will want to know that you're familiar with the tools they'll most likely be using.

You can just start with Notepad and csc.exe, the the command-line C# compiler that ships with the .NET SDK.
However, IDE is not necessarily synonym for code generator. I would download Visual Studio Express and start with empty Console projects.
Have fun!

Don't forget you can build/assemble C# projects using MSBuild and a .sln file if you really want. But the IDEs will make life a lot easier.

The IDE will not write code for you, it will help you writing code. Using libraries will help you concentrate on what you really want to program, not the things that already have been done.

Check into AvalonEdit, the text editor component of SharpDevelop. It is an open source text editor that has classes that could implement features such as intellisense and syntax highlighting. You would only have to use as much of it as you wanted and you could embed it anywhere you would use a text box control.
If you are familiar with Ant from Java then you could also check out NAnt to do your compile phase.

As far as I know, with Visual Studio you also get a command line C# compiler, csc. You could use a text editor and manually compile your C# code with that on the command line if you really want - that wouldn't be very practical however when your project contains more than a handful of source files.
If your project becomes bigger, you could use a tool like NAnt, which is a .NET version of the popular Java build tool Ant.
I agree with Jon Skeet about that your way of working is not very practical. If you are really looking for a software development job, you'd better learn to use the tools that other developers use. An employer will also not accept the fact that you'd want to write all the code yourself instead of using libraries. By using libraries instead of writing it all yourself you save lots of time, you are reusing well-tested code and your code will be much easier to maintain by other developers.

Porting C++ to C#

C++ and C# are quite simmilar programming languages, in my opinion. If a C++ code needs to be ported to platform where C# is the only supported platform, how much work will need to be done?
Should I get ready, that most of the C++ code will need to be rewritten to C#? Or, because of language simmilarities, should refactoring be quite easy and straightforward?
I am aware, that it will depend on the application itself, but I am asking in general.

I have done a major port of a C++ application to C# recently. Overall I thought it was a pleasant experience. These are the steps that I took, they might or might not apply to your application.
Get the "scaffolding" in place in C#, design your architecture. This is the time to get in major architecture changes from the existing application if you choose to do so.
Get your tests in place. I can't over-emphasize this one. Since you are porting an existing application you should have a set of tests already in place that verify the correct behavior of your application. You can and should reuse these tests for your C# application. This is the one thing that gives you an edge when porting - you know (and have written) already many of the tests you want. Start porting your test project.
Put in method stubs for your C# methods that reflect the existing C++ methods. Given the framework support in C# some methods might not be needed at all anymore, or are very simplified - this is the time to decide.
Copy and paste. Yes I used copy and paste for most of the C++ code - all the flow statements basically can be reused if you are careful. Once pasted go through line by line, many things like use of pointers etc. must be rewritten to use a equivalent C# type.
Once you have re-written a method in such a way, do the obvious re-factoring given the framework support / helper classes you might have been lacking in C++ but are readily available in C#. Also naming conventions for variables etc. can be changed here, should be straightforward given the built in support for this in VS 2010.
Run your tests! Test early and often that the overall framework you have in place so far produces the exact same output as your C++ application which you can use as a reference. This is also the time to add missing tests.
Refactor, Refactor, Refactor. Every application ages, and so did your C++ application most likely. Look closely at the underlying design and simplify and remove as much as possible. Verify at each step by running your tests.

First thing first, this is porting and not refactoring. Also I think it's an extremely bad idea.
It is true that you could (with a lot of work) port C++ to unsafe C#, but saying that the syntax is very similar is a bit of a stretch. In fact, following the same line of reasoning you could port C++ to any other C derived language, and it would be equally painful.
Again, if you do it expect a shedload of rework. It's more than likely gonna take you more than re-coding it from scratch using the existing code as mere model, which is in my opinion a better and less messy option.

Just compile the C++ code with the /clr compiler option. That will translate the code to IL, it can execute on most any .NET enabled platform. There are very few C++ constructs that cannot be translated, it would have to use non-standard compiler extensions like __fastcall.
However, I suspect that you will find out that the platform requires verifiable code. Which is the common reason why a platform would restrict code to a .NET compliant language. I cannot guess at this since you didn't mention the execution environment. Native C++ translated to IL is not verifiable due to pointer manipulations. If that's the case then you are looking at a pretty drastic rewrite.

I'd be interested to know where C# is the "only supported platform".
The problem of rewriting in a new language can be whether you need to rewrite every single part of the code and cannot use any of the old code at all. Sometimes it is best, even when doing a rewrite, to make it more of a refactor: rewrite some parts of the code, move others. The existing code is known to work and can be tricky to reproduce. And it takes time. There needs to be a good reason to do a full rewrite.
.NET supports a version of C++, and Visual Studio also comes with Visual C++ to build standard C++, so consider whether or not you can make this a phased transformation, and whether or not you really have to rewrite the whole thing.

Porting C++ code to C# will not be that hard, assuming that all your dependent libraries have existing C# counterparts. Lack of dependencies is the most likely pitfall. The core concepts of your program, such as inheritance, heap, references, data structures, should be fairly easily translatable.
This is assuming that you don't invoke any specific low level behaviour such as custom memory management, because C# does not really support that kind of thing and you could have a serious problem there.

How do i prevent my code from being stolen?

What happens exactly when I launch a .NET exe? I know that C# is compiled to IL code and I think the generated exe file just a launcher that starts the runtime and passes the IL code to it. But how? And how complex process is it?
IL code is embedded in the exe. I think it can be executed from the memory without writing it to the disk while ordinary exe's are not (ok, yes but it is very complicated).
My final aim is extracting the IL code and write my own encrypted launcher to prevent scriptkiddies to open my code in Reflector and just steal all my classes easily. Well I can't prevent reverse engineering completely. If they are able to inspect the memory and catch the moment when I'm passing the pure IL to the runtime then it won't matter if it is a .net exe or not, is it? I know there are several obfuscator tools but I don't want to mess up the IL code itself.
EDIT: so it seems it isn't worth trying what I wanted. They will crack it anyway... So I will look for an obfuscation tool. And yes my friends said too that it is enough to rename all symbols to a meaningless name. And reverse engineering won't be so easy after all.

If you absolutely insist on encrypting your assembly, probably the best way to do it is to put your program code into class library assemblies and encrypt them. You would then write a small stub executable which decrypts the assemblies into memory and executes them.
This is an extremely bad idea for two reasons:
You're going to have to include the encryption key in your stub. If a 1337 hacker can meaningfully use your reflected assemblies, he can just as easily steal your encryption key and decrypt them himself. (This is basically the Analog Hole)
Nobody cares about your 1337 code. I'm sorry, but that's tough love. Nobody else ever thinks anyone's code is nearly as interesting as the author does.

A "secret" that you share with thousands of people is not a secret. Remember, your attackers only have to break your trivial-to-break-because-the-key-is-right-there "encryption" scheme exactly once.
If your code is so valuable that it must be kept secret then keep it secret. Leave the code only on your own servers; write your software as a web service. Then secure the server.

the generated exe file just a launcher that starts the runtime and passes the IL code to it.
Not exactly. There are different ways you can set up your program, but normally the IL code is compiled to native machine code that runs in process with the runtime.
As for the kiddies — you're deluding yourself if you think you can sell to them or anyone who uses what they redistribute. If they can't unlock your app they'll move on and find one they can or do without. They represent exactly $0 in potential sales; it makes little sense to spend too much effort attempting to thwart them because there'd be no return on your investment. A basic obfuscator might be fine, but don't go much beyond that.
Realistically, most developers face a much bigger challenge from obscurity than from piracy. Anything you do that prevents you from getting the word out about your product hurts you more than the pirates do. This includes making people pay money to get it. Most of the time a better approach is to have a free version of your app that the kiddies don't even need to unlock; something that already works for them well enough that cracking your app would just be a waste of their time, and not just a time or feature-limited trial. Let them and as many others as possible spread it far and wide.
Now I know that you do eventually need some paying customers. The key is to now use all the attention you get from the free product to upsell or promote something else that's more profitable. One option here is to also have a premium version with additional features targeted largely at a business audience; things like making it easy to deploy to an entire network and manage that way. Businesses have deeper pockets and are more likely to pay your license fees. Your free version then serves to promote your product and give it legitimacy for your business customers.
Of course, there are other models as well, but no matter what you do it's worth remembering that obscurity is the bigger challenge and that pirated copies of your software will never translate into sales. Ultimately (and of course this depends on your execution) you'll be able to make more money with a business model that takes advantage of those points than you will trying to fight them.

"...prevent scriptkiddies to open my
code in Reflector and just steal all
my classes easily."
Unfortunately, regardless of how you obscure launching, it's a matter of half a dozen commands in a debugger to dump a currently-running assembly to a file of the user's choice. So, even if you can launch your application as Brian suggested, it's not hard to get that application's components into Reflector once it's running (I can post a sample from WinDbg if someone would find it interesting).
Obfuscation tools are created from huge amounts of technical experience, and are often designed to make it difficult for debuggers to reliably attach to a process, or to extract information from it. As Brian said: I'm not sure why you're determined to preserve the IL and, if you want any meaningful protection from script kiddies, that's something you may have to change your mind on.

"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind." -- R. Kipling

Personally I think that obfuscation is the way to go. It is simple and can be effective, especially if all your code is within an exe (I'm not sure what the concern is with "messing up the IL").
However, if you feel like that won't work for you, perhaps you can encrypt your exe and embed it as a resoource within your launcher. The simplest way to handle it would be to decrypt the exe resource and write it out too file and execute it. Once the exe has completed executing, delete the file. You might also be able to run it through the Emit functions. I have no idea how this would work, but here is an article to get you started - Using Reflection Emit to Cache .NET Assemblies.
Of course your decryption key would probably have to be embedded in the exe as well so somebody really determined will be able to decrypt your assembly anyway. This is why obfuscation is probably the best approach.

Copying my answer from this question (which is not exactly duplicate but can be answered with the same answer, hence CW):
A Windows EXE contains multiple "parts". Simplified, the .net Code (=MSIL) is only a Part of the EXE, and there is also a "real" native Windows Part inside the EXE that serves as some sort of launcher for the .net Framework which then executes the MSIL.
Mono will just take the MSIL and execute it, ignoring the native Windows Launcher stuff.
Again, this is a simplified overview.
Edit: I fear my understanding of the deep depp details is not good enough for really much detail (I know roughly what a PE Header is, but not really the details), but i found these links helpful:
NET Assembly Structure – Part II
.NET Foundations - .NET assembly structure
Appendix: If you really want to go deeper, pick up a copy on Advanced .net Debugging. The very first chapter explains exactly how the .net Assembly is loaded prior and after Windows XP (since XP, the Windows Loader is .net aware which radically changes how .net Applications are started)

Effort estimation: using C / Win32 or learning C# / .NET

I intend to write a small application to scratch a personal itch and probably make the life of some colleagues easier. Here is what I have:
10+ years of experience in C
Plenty of experience in programming against the Win16/32 API in C from the Win3.1 to 2000 days.
C library written by myself already doing about 75% of what the application shall do.
What the application shall do:
open a binary, feed it into the mentioned library.
take the resulting text output and feed it into a new Excel Workbook.
apply some formating.
integrate nicely with the Windows environment (availability in "Open With...", remember some stuff using the registry etc.)
(maybe later) before giving the CSV data to Excel, parse it by looking up the meaning of some values in an XML file.
Except for the XML parsing part I have done all of that stuff before including COM / Office Automation in C/Win32. There is a lot of boilerplate code involved, but it is doable and the result will be a pretty small application without the need for an installer.
So why even think about C# / .Net?
no experience with parsing XML
the promise of less boilerplate code for the Windows and Excel stuff (yes, I have done C++ with OWL, MFC, ATL etc. but I am not going there anymore - not for free/fun)
Since I have also experience with C++, VB(not .Net) and a little Java / Objective-C I suppose learning C# will all be about the .Net libraries and not actually about the language.
My considerations so far:
Learning .NET might be fun and might result in less code / first steps in a more modern environment.
Sticking with what I know will lead to a predictable outcome in terms of effort and function (except for the optional XML stuff)
VB looked great at the beginning until the projects where about 80% done, then the pain started and the DLL coding in C. I am concerned history could repeat itself if I choose .Net.
My primary objective is the functionality. Effort is a concern. The XML parsing is optional.
Please advice.
Update: one thing I forgot to mention explicitly is that I am also worried about easy deployment of the tool to my co-workers. With Win32 I am pretty sure I can come up with an EXE file < 1Mb that can be easily emailed and does not require installation. With .Net not so much. Can I create the necessary MSI or whatever in Visual Studio Express (free) or do I need 3rd party tools?

as others have your question mostly covered, I'd just like to quickly comment on your considerations:
Learning .NET might be fun and might result in less code / first steps in a more modern environment.
Totally agreed. It is definitely fun and usually it does result in less code. The investment you make now will certainly benefit you in future projects. It is way faster to program in .Net than in C. Not only it is easier, but it is also safer. You are isolated from many programming errors common in C mostly related to memory mismanagement. You also get a very complete managed API to do stuff you would usually need to build your own framework.
Sticking with what I know will lead to a predictable outcome in terms of effort and function (except for the optional XML stuff)
Hence your indecision. :-)
VB looked great at the beginning until the projects where about 80% done, then the pain started and the DLL coding in C. I am concerned history could repeat itself if I choose .Net. My primary objective is the functionality. Effort is a concern. The XML parsing is optional.
.Net is an entirely different beast from VB. Most of the things you wouldn't be able to do in VB, or at least do them easily, are supported by .Net. For instance, Windows Services are a snap to build in .Net. Socket programming is also supported, but there are very few reasons to do it yourself, as you've got loads of communication APIs with .Net. You've got web-services, .Net Remoting, MSMQ management, and more recently WCF. Proper multithreading is supported by .Net, unlike the idiotic apartment model in VB. In case you really need to go low level, you can also actually use pointers in C#, inside of unsafe code blocks, even though I would never advise to do so.
If you really need to do things in C, then integrating is also relatively easy. You can create COM objects and use interop to work with them from .Net. You can also interact directly with plain ol' dlls using DllImport. Using www.pinvoke.net makes it easier.
When I developed in VB, sometimes I also had to go back to C++ to do stuff that I wasn't able of doing in VB. Since I began programming in .Net, the only extremely rare scenarios I would need to go back to C++ were when I needed to use legacy COM components that used types I was having a hard time to marshal via interop. I wouldn't worry about history repeating itself.

If you're using COM, you may be interested in using C# 4.0 instead of earlier versions - the downside being that it's only in beta. But basically it makes COM stuff somewhat less ugly for various reasons.
I'd expect there to be plenty of good C libraries for XML parsing by now. I would expect the main benefit to actually be the knowledge gained. I doubt that you'll actually produce the code faster for this project, but the next one may well be a lot quicker.
How much do you care about learning new stuff?

It sounds like an ideal project for learning C# & .NET.
You know most of what you need to do so you can use that to gain a base level of understanding of C# & .NET which you can then apply to the stuff you need to learn.
As Rune says though, a key driver could be the timescales. If this is something you need in a hurry then coding it in C & using win32 directly might be the answer.
Sorry I couldn't be more definite.

I think you should use C#. With your experience the learning curve won't be too steep. The code will ultimately be cleaner (and less of it) than you probably could with C/Win32.
There is probably going to be no problem using your existing C-library with the [DllImport] attribute.

It depends. :-) It depends on whether you want to do this quickly or if you want to learn something new. It depends on whether you will be the only maintainer of the code or if others will maintain it in the future. It depends on how complex your xml handling will be and on how complex the COM automation is.
You will probably get a working application quicker if you do it in C than in C#. Both since you have much of the stuff needed already in place and since you know C well.
But this project sounds like a good match for C# and .Net. .Net has great support for XML and COM interop is easy but clumsy in C# (much better in the next version!). So if you are interested in learning C# and .Net this would be a good project to do so.
I would definitely do this in .Net and probably C# (but I am biased). Using .Net would probably result in code that is easier to read and maintain and most probably easier to write. So if you are interested in learning C# I would suggest you go for it!
Edit:
You worry about the size of the executable if you write it in .Net. I doubt that will be a problem, for most if not all of the libraries you will use for a project like this will already be installed on your computer. 1 Mb is rather large for a .Net executable, event for a big project.

a short notice on the installation. .NET is as default xcopy-able so you wouldn't need an installer for the exe to be usable. Mail it around (or with the next release of the .NET framework optionaly leave it on a network share)

You could look at building a hybrid system that uses C++/CLI and C#. C++/CLI provides a nice bridge between the two and lets you easily split different parts of the system between the managed and unmanaged worlds.
Not sure if the setup projects are included in the free versions of visual studio. But you could use clickonce (included with the framework) or WIX (open source XML based msi creation tool).

learning C# will all be about the .Net libraries and not actually about the language
No there are many things you need to learn about the language (delegates , events , generics ...) and also it is object oriented and it manages the memory by itself and yes no pointers :)
anyway C# and .NET are great all you need is some effort to get up to speed