Interop marshaling of VT_RECORD VARIANTs with side-by-side deployment, is it possible?

Question

Hi All,

Here is my problem, we have a VB.NET application that talks to ATL COM dlls. Some of the COM interface function parameters are VARIANTs that contain UDTs (VT_RECORD) and they need to be marshaled back and forth between COM and .NET. Registering the COM type library, creating HKCR\Record keys and putting a PIA in the GAC has been doing the job so far, however we are now switching to side-by-side deployment and would like to get rid of the registry dependency. Is this possible and how should the COM DLL manifest be configured to do this? I have not been able to find any documentation on this anywhere.

Thanks,

Pierre