A while ago I wrote about C#'s restriction with static classes being used for generic arguments. Yesterday I ran into this scenario again for ScopeSwitcher in Spackle.NET, and I thought of a way to get around it:

private static void Switch<TNew>(Type target, Action code, params object[] args)
{
    IDisposable switcher = null;

    try
    {
        switcher = Activator.CreateInstance(
            typeof(ScopeSwitcher<,>).MakeGenericType(
                target, typeof(TNew)), args) as IDisposable;
        code();
    }
    finally
    {
        if(switcher != null)
        {
            switcher.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

Granted, this isn't a very clean approach. But it does give me the ability to write code like this:

[TestMethod]
public void SwitchOnStaticClass()
{
    var currentValue = Guid.NewGuid();
    var newValue = Guid.NewGuid();

    StaticValuePropertyOnStaticClass.Id = currentValue;
    ScopeSwitcherHelpers.Switch<Guid>(typeof(StaticValuePropertyOnStaticClass), newValue, () =>
    {
        Assert.AreEqual(newValue, StaticValuePropertyOnStaticClass.Id);
    });

    Assert.AreEqual(currentValue, StaticValuePropertyOnStaticClass.Id);
}

Note that StaticValuePropertyOnStaticClass is a static class.

Now, in my case, I only need the variable switcher around for a short time. If I needed to use that type for a number of interactions, I'd probably write a DynamicMethod to improve performance. But at least there is a way in C# to use a static class as a generic argument: just use MakeGenericType().

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