Graphical Debugging

Extension for Visual Studio Code

This extension allows to display graphical representation of variables during debugging.

Download

You can download this extension from Visual Studio Marketplace or GitHub.

Instructions

1. Place a breakpoint
2. Start debugging
3. After clicking + in Graphical Watch write the name of a variable

Supported types

C/C++ (cppdbg, cppvsdbg, lldb, cortex-debug)

• Containers of values, points and other geometries
  • C-style array
  • STL: array, deque, list, span, vector
  • Boost.Array: array
  • Boost.Container: static_vector, vector
  • Boost.Geometry: varray
• 1D values
  • STL: duration
  • Boost.Chrono: duration
  • Boost.Units: quantity
• 2D values/geometries
  • STL: complex, pair
  • Boost.Geometry: box, linestring, multi_linestring, multi_point, multi_polygon, point, point_xy, point_xyz, polygon, ring, segment
  • Boost.Polygon: point_data, polygon_data, polygon_with_holes_data, rectangle_data, segment_data

C# (coreclr)

• Containers of values, points and other geometries
  • Array
  • System.Collections.Generic: List
• 2D values/geometries
  • System.Drawing: Point

Java (java)

• Containers of values, points and other geometries
  • Array
  • java.util: ArrayList, LinkedList, Vector
• 1D values
  • java.lang: Byte, Double, Float, Integer, Long, Short
• 2D values/geometries
  • java.awt: Point
  • java.awt.geom: Point2D.Double, Point2D.Float

Javascript (chrome, msedge, node, pwa-node, pwa-chrome, pwa-msedge)

• Containers of values, points and other geometries
  • Array

Python (python, debugpy, Jupyter Notebook / Python Kernel Debug Adapter)

• Containers of values, points and other geometries
  • deque, list
  • llist: dllist, sllist
  • numpy: array
• 2D geometries
  • tuple
  • Shapely: GeometryCollection, LinearRing, LineString, MultiLineString, MultiPoint, MultiPolygon, Point, Polygon
  • SymPy: Point2D, Polygon, Segment2D

Ruby (rdbg)

• Containers of values, points and other geometries
  • Array
• 2D geometries
  • RGeo: CAPIPointImpl, CAPILineImpl, CAPILineStringImpl, CAPILinearRingImpl, CAPIPolygonImpl, CAPIMultiPointImpl, CAPIMultiLineStringImpl, CAPIMultiPolygonImpl, BoundingBox

Advanced

User-defined types

You can define your types in *.json files which can be placed e.g. in the workspace. The following file defines Point C++ type containing x and y members.

{
    "name": "graphicaldebugging",
    "language": "cpp",
    "types": [
        {
            "type": "Point",
            "kind": "point",
            "coordinates": {
                "x": "$this.x",
                "y": "$this.y"
            }
        }
    ]
}

For more examples see *.json files here.

The directory containing user files can be defined in settings, by default it is the workspace directory of currently debugged program.

Type aliases

GDB and LLDB debuggers don't report original C++ types for variables created from type alias/typedef but original types are needed for this extension to work correctly. Fortunately the implementation of this proposal allows to unroll the types automatically.

If you choose to define aliases manually, e.g. automatic unrolling doesn't work for you, you can do it in the same *.json files as described above. For example the following aliases:

namespace bg = boost::geometry;
using point_t = bg::model::point<double, 2, bg::cs::cartesian>;
using polygon_t = bg::model::polygon<point_t>;

could be defined as follows:

{
    "name": "graphicaldebugging",
    "language": "cpp",
    "aliases": [
        {
            "name": "point_t",
            "type": "boost::geometry::model::point<double,2,boost::geometry::cs::cartesian>"
        },
        {
            "name": "polygon_t",
            "type": "boost::geometry::model::polygon<boost::geometry::model::point<double,2,boost::geometry::cs::cartesian>,true,true,std::vector,std::vector,std::allocator,std::allocator>"
        }
    ]
}

Known issues

• You may experience problems with CodeLLDB because simple expressions are enabled by default. If some of the variables are not visualized you could try enabling native expressions in the launch.json.
• Holes of geographic polygons may be visualized incorrectly. This is a side effect of a workaround for an issue in Plotly which doesn't support geographic polygons with holes.