Using gRPC in x86 .NET applications

In this post we introduced gRPC and its .NET implementations. In some cases, you’ll need to use a gRPC client from a legacy Win32 process but, since the NuGet package of gRPC C# is based on the x64 C++ native library, it will not work as expected.

Luckly, a solution is really simple:

• clone the gRPC repository from github
• open the Grpc.sln in src/grpc-csharp folder
• create a new build configuration and set it to x86

Before start to build, you need to build the C++ library. You can proceed in two ways:

• follow the steps on building page
• be sure that you have the x86 version of grpc_csharp_ext.dll in cmake\build\x86\Release (or Debug) folder

To get the libraries, create a new project and add a nuget reference to Grpc package. Then go to packages\Grpc.Core.2.24.0\runtimes\win\native and copy the grpc_csharp_ext.x86.dll library in the previously mentioned cmake\build\x86\Release folder. Finally, be sure to rename the library in grpc_csharp_ext.dll. Now you’ll be able to build from Visual Studio 2019.

Enjoy!