(This is the rewrite of my post to comp.lang.tcl. I thought it was a not good place to post this kind of a question.)

Is it possible for a starpack-wrapped Tcl/Tk application to use external .NET assemblies using Garuda? I use the latest build (1.0.7900.33333, 2021-08-23).

My Tcl/Tk application is wrapped into a starpack with ActiveState TclApp. I wanted to check if Garuda can work with my app.

Ideally, I want to embed Eagle.dll and Garuda.dll into my starpack but at first, I just installed Eagle/Garuda binaries to the lib folder under the working directory and inserted the path to the head of ::auto_path.

The purpose to use Garuda is to load an external managed assembly from the local sub-folder. The assembly is dependent on several DLLs in the same folder. I keep them out of my starpack.

```
+ lib\
  + Garuda-1.0\
    + dotnet.tcl
    + Eagle.dll
    + Garuda.dll
    + helper.tcl
    + pkgIndex.tcl
+ GRPCRemoteClient\
  + Google.Protobuf.dll
  + Grpc.Core.Api.dll
  + Grpc.Core.dll
  + grcp_csharp_ext.x86.dll
  + GRPCRemoteClient.dll (This is the DLL to be loaded from MyApp.tcl)
  + System.Buffers.dll
  + System.Memory.dll
  + System.Numerics.Vectors.dll
  + System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Unsafe.dll
+ MyApp.exe (MyApp.tcl wrapped into exe.)
```

MyApp.tcl is the main script. It loads Garuda.
The eagle command loads GRPCRemoteClient\GRPCRemoteClient.dll and the classes and the methods are used. The other DLLs in GRPCRemoteClient folder are loaded by GRPCRemoteClient.dll.

If MyApp.tcl is not wrapped into a starkit, it works well.
However, if it is wrapped, it can't create any instance of classes defined inside GRPCRemoteClient.dll, although it seemed to load GRPCRemoteClient.dll successfully.

I followed the instruction in this article and added METHOD_PROTOCOL_V1R2 flag before loading Garuda package.

https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Garuda.

# MyApp.tcl

set exehome [pwd]

set auto_path [linsert $auto_path 0 [file join $::exehome lib]]

namespace eval ::Garuda {
    variable methodFlags 0x40; # METHOD_PROTOCOL_V1R2
}
package require Garuda
eagle {
    object invoke System.Reflection.Assembly LoadFrom ./GRPCRemoteClient/GRPCRemoteClient.dll
}
# => {GRPCRemoteClient, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null} c199bf34-6a72-4256-8e1c-5857959232ad 293
# => Seemed successful.

eagle {
    object create -alias GRPCRemote.GRPCRemoteClient "127.0.0.1" 50051
}
# => {type "GRPCRemote.GRPCRemoteClient" not found} {expected type value but got "GRPCRemote.GRPCRemoteClient"}
# => Failed.