Well-authored components do not perturb the environment of the hosting application, nor do they leak activation contexts. Well-authored components perform their own context management rather than relying on the hosting application's environment.
The author of the hosted component is in the best position to know exactly which other assemblies the component requires. Relying on the host application to provide the correct environment for your hosted component is a probable source of errors. Instead, create a manifest for your hosted component that specifies all its dependencies, and then compile using ISOLATION_AWARE_ENABLED. This ensures that outside calls made by your component are isolated and use the correct versions. Because the activation context that ISOLATION_AWARE_ENABLED uses is per-DLL, it is safe to use in multiple DLLs, each with their own manifest calling out dependencies.
If it is not possible to compile with ISOLATION_AWARE_ENABLED, then use a solution like the one presented in Using Callbacks From Hosted Components.
You should activate your own activation context in all the entrypoints that the hosting application can call to ensure that your hosted component runs entirely with the correct activation context. You can use a C++ helper object to facilitate changing all the entrypoints. For example, you could use a C++ class such as the following:
class CActivationContext {
HANDLE m_hActivationContext;
public:
CActivationContext() : m_hActivationContext(INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {}
VOID Set(HANDLE hActCtx) {
if (hActCtx != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
AddRefActCtx(hActCtx);
if (m_hActivationContext != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
ReleaseActCtx(m_hActivationContext);
m_hActivationContext = hActCtx;
}
~CActivationContext() {
if (m_hActivationContext != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
ReleaseActCtx(m_hActivationContext);
}
BOOL Activate(ULONG_PTR &ulpCookie) {
return ActivateActCtx(m_hActivationContext, &ulpCookie);
}
BOOL Deactivate(ULONG_PTR ulpCookie) {
return DeactivateActCtx(0, ulpCookie);
}
};
class CActCtxActivator {
CActivationContext &m_ActCtx;
ULONG_PTR m_Cookie;
bool m_fActivated;
public:
CActCtxActivator(CActivationContext& src, bool fActivate = true)
: m_ActCtx(src), m_Cookie(0), m_fActivated(false) {
if (fActivate) {
if (src.Activate(m_Cookie))
m_fActivated = true;
}
}
~CActCtxActivator() {
if (m_fActivated) {
m_ActCtx.Deactivate(m_Cookie);
m_fActivated = false;
}
}
};
This can then be used in your component, using a global variable to store the activation context that should be activated on each entrypoint. In this way, you can isolate your component from your hosting application.
CActivationContext s_GlobalContext;
void MyExportedEntrypoint(void) {
CActCtxActivator ScopedContext(s_GlobalContext);
// Do whatever work here
// Destructor automatically deactivates the context
}
void MyInitializerFunction() {
HANDLE hActCtx;
ACTCTX actctx = {sizeof(actctx)};
hActCtx = CreateActCtx(&actctx);
s_GlobalContext.Set(hActCtx);
ReleaseActCtx(hActCtx);
// The static destructor for s_GlobalContext destroys the
// activation context on component unload.
}
Send comments about this topic to Microsoft
Build date: 11/1/2007