Beginner question: Menu items in main menu bar no longer enabled when it is used in a child component

General JUCE discussion
1

As long as my main menu bar class is used as the main component, as demonstrated in MenusDemo.h, menu items are available as expected.

class MainMenu: public MenuBarComponent,
public ApplicationCommandTarget,
public MenuBarModel
...

MainWindow (String name)  (...)
{
 ...
setContentOwned (new MainMenu(), true);
...
}

However, when I create a new MainComponent and add an instance of MainMenu to it…

class MainComponent   : public AudioAppComponent
{
public:
	MainComponent() : mainMenu()
{
	...
	addChildComponent(mainMenu);
	...
}

void resized() override
{
    ...
	mainMenu.setBounds(getBounds());
}


private:
 ...
MainMenu mainMenu;
...
};

MainWindow (String name)  (...)
{
 ...
setContentOwned (new MainComponent(), true);
...
}

…then all menu items except for the bar names are disabled.

I noticed that in PopupMenu::addCommandItem (juce_PopupMenu.cpp) in line 1422

auto* target = commandManager->getTargetForCommand (commandID, info);

target is defined in the first case but not defined in the second case.
In

ApplicationCommandManager::getTargetForCommand

nullptr is returned by

auto* target = getFirstCommandTarget (commandID);

if (target == nullptr)
    target = JUCEApplication::getInstance();

if (target != nullptr)
    target = target->getTargetForCommand (commandID); //returns nullptr!

So it seems to be a problem with ApplicationCommandManager.
Since the MainMenu class works works fine if directly used as the main component, I suppose I need to forward something to it when using it in MainComponent.
What am I doing wrong / missing?

Thanks a lot!

P.S.: commandIDs seems to be wrong - it is {4097} but should be {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}.
P.P.S.: In the DialogWindow Class Reference it says that

Any of the methods available to a DocumentWindow or ResizableWindow are also available to this, so it can be made resizable, have a menu bar, etc.

Does that mean that only ‘window’ objects are supposed to have menu bars?

P.P.P.S.: The menu seems to work when doing

class MainComponent   : public AudioAppComponent, public MainMenu

but since MainComponent also has

private: MainMenu mainMenu;

this seems to be a bad solution…
Maybe… do I have to move the ApplicationCommandTarget to MainComponent?

2

My current solution looks like this:

in MainMenu.h:

enum  VPOLABMainMenuCommandIDs {...};
class VPOLABMainMenuCommandTarget : public ApplicationCommandTarget {...};
class VPOLABMainMenu : public MenuBarComponent, public MenuBarModel
{
public:
	VPOLABMainMenu(VPOLABMainMenuCommandTarget *act)
	{
	...
	commandManager.registerAllCommandsForTarget((ApplicationCommandTarget*) act);
	...
	}
...
}

in MainComponent.h:

#include "MainMenu.h"
...
class MainComponent   : ... public VPOLABMainMenuCommandTarget
{
public:
	MainComponent() : mainMenu(this)
	{
		...
		AudioAppComponent::addAndMakeVisible(mainMenu);
		...
		AudioAppComponent::setSize(...);
	}
	bool perform(const InvocationInfo& info) override{...}
	void paint (Graphics& g) override
	{
		g.fillAll (AudioAppComponent::getLookAndFeel()....);
	}
	void resized() override
	{
    		...
		mainMenu.setBounds(AudioAppComponent::getBounds());
		...
	}
	...
private:
	...
	VPOLABMainMenu mainMenu;
	...
}

Is there a better solution? Thanks!