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70-562 Custom Visualizers

Framework objects are clearly viewable in the locals window during debugging. User made class librairies and their object need to provide visualizers for maintenance and debugging.

You can create your own visualizers, MS exposes the functionnality through the .Net Framework; and this is relatively easy.

Mulitple visualizers can be created per type. You can have tree views, grids; customizing it to the way that is the most usefull for debugging this particular object.

The [Serializable()] attribute has to be included to your class to allow the visual studio visualizer to parse the object.

A visualizer is a dll, a regular assembly, it requires a windows form to display the data.

The visualizer class will be implemented by the form.

The visualizer class has to inherit the DialogDebuggerVisualizer class with the DebuggerVisualizer attribute, and also the Microsoft.VisaulStudio.DebuggerVisualizers namespace.

The visualizer can be made to only read, or modify existing data.

The visualizer is a project in it's own, and would be included in a solution that include testing projects.

Among the things to do, you will have to overirde the Show method.

Testing the client visualizer can be difficult, with the TestClientVisualizer, you can test it easier.

Next deploy the visualizer in one of these two location. install directory Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers or MyDocuments\Visual Studio 2008\Visualizers

Idealy, just develop it in this myDocument folder so that it doesnt need to be copied each time it's built.

You can step through the .Net Framework code if needed. Not all of the librairies are available as of now. Visual Studio needs to be configured to download the source code. Debugging->General->Enable just my code; uncheck this box, and check "Enable Source server support".


Next go to the Symbols section, Create a location, http://referencesource.microsft.com/symbols then set a location to put the symbols, you can check the box to search the above only when symbols are loaded, in order to download just what is needed, and won't need to be downloaded again unless the version changes.

Open the call stack window, show external, and right click, Load assemblies. It will download the symbols. Then just step into the code. Note that most of the time the code will show in C# even if the project is in VB.

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