[cfe-commits] [PATCH] Add support to VS debugger for previewing SmallString<>

[J B]

I spent some time recently adding more/improving the visualizers, but I
wasn't focused on any in particular.  I was mostly just working my way
through objects in the debugger and improving what I encountered.  I have a
pretty decent grasp at this point of what the expression language can do,
after fighting with it for several hours.  If there are Types that more
experienced devs would like to see visualized, I'd be happy to take a stab
at them.

Unfortunately, I got pulled away from the task for the time being, so
here's what I had when I stopped.

Can we get this committed as well?

Thanks,

Jay Blanchard

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 6:31 PM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Will Wilson <will at indefiant.com> wrote:
> > On 3 May 2012 19:40, Will Wilson <will at indefiant.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> For Visual Studio users: Here's little patch to the
> >>>>>> clangVisualizers.txt that allows the contents of a SmallString to be
> >>>>>> seen in string form, rather than (somewhat less usefully) as a
> >>>>>> SmallVector.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I assume this wouldn't work for SmallStrings that include embedded
> >>>>> '\0' characters? Though I suppose we don't do any better for
> StringRef
> >>>>> either, so perhaps that's not a priority.
> >>>>
> >>>> Unfortunately not, I can't find any support for anything other than
> >>>> basic zero-terminated strings in the syntax.
> >>>
> >>> I don't know anything about VS, really, but SmallStrings are not
> usually null-terminated. Have you tested this when there is definitely
> something after the string?
> >>
> >> Yes, in such cases you see whatever follows the string data. Therefore
> >> (as with StringRef) you need to be careful interpreting the string
> >> data in the debugger preview. That said, I'd far rather have the
> >> utility of seeing it displayed as a string with garbage at the end
> >> than have to interpret it as an array of characters. And either way,
> >> you may still view it as an array by expanding the string node to show
> >> the underlying view of the SmallVector<> which also lets you see the
> >> true extent of it.
> >>
> >> So it's definitely imperfect, but better than nothing :)
> >
> > Any thoughts on getting this committed? It's pretty minor but helpful.
>
> Sorry, just lost track of it. Committed as r156959.
>
> > Incidentally, I could look at writing a custom debug plugin in the
> > future to deal better with StringRef and it's relatives in VS.
>
> Sounds good - I don't personally use VS for development, but happy to
> throw these in.
>
> [maybe I mentioned this already & it was refuted, but: It'd be nice if
> they could use some common functionality (it's weird that visualizing
> a derived class can't use a base class's visualization behavior by
> default... but perhaps that makes sense, I'm not sure - if not by
> default, perhaps explicitly just by casting to the base)]
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