Debugger visualizers - about as much use as a chocolate teapot?

[Clive Dixon]

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with debugger visualizers (VS 2005). It
seems virtually impossible to write one which doesn't cause a timeout when
trying to view the data.

I'm guessing that part of the problem may be the time required to generate
the temporary serialization assemblies. So, he thinks, set the project flag
to build serialization assemblies. Does this work? Of course not. Further
investigation, found only by Google, not via any Microsoft documentation,
reveals that this setting only works for web service proxies. So, he thinks,
let's try creating a post-build command line to call sgen.exe. Only now I
get "exited with code 9009" or "exited with code 123" and so on. Is there
any documentation on these error codes? Of course not. So it seems that this
line of investigation in trying to improve the speed of visualizers has come
to a grinding halt.

Seriously, has anyone else been having no end of problems trying to create
debugger visualisers which actually work, or is it just me?

 

[RayLopez99]

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with debugger visualizers (VS 2005).It
seems virtually impossible to write one which doesn't cause a timeout when
trying to view the data.

I'm guessing that part of the problem may be the time required to generate
the temporary serialization assemblies. So, he thinks, set the project flag
to build serialization assemblies. Does this work? Of course not. Further
investigation, found only by Google, not via any Microsoft documentation,
reveals that this setting only works for web service proxies. So, he thinks,
let's try creating a post-build command line to call sgen.exe. Only now I
get "exited with code 9009" or "exited with code 123" and so on. Is there
any documentation on these error codes? Of course not. So it seems that this
line of investigation in trying to improve the speed of visualizers has come
to a grinding halt.

Seriously, has anyone else been having no end of problems trying to create
debugger visualisers which actually work, or is it just me?

I'm glad others are having this problem too. I don't even use the
step-through debugger anymore hardly; I just write to sdout or file,
or use a MessageBox. It's a loss in productivity but it gets the job
done.

RL

 

[Ignacio Machin ( .NET/ C# MVP )]

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with debugger visualizers (VS 2005). It
seems virtually impossible to write one which doesn't cause a timeout when
trying to view the data.

I'm guessing that part of the problem may be the time required to generate
the temporary serialization assemblies. So, he thinks, set the project flag
to build serialization assemblies. Does this work? Of course not. Further
investigation, found only by Google, not via any Microsoft documentation,
reveals that this setting only works for web service proxies. So, he thinks,
let's try creating a post-build command line to call sgen.exe. Only now I
get "exited with code 9009" or "exited with code 123" and so on. Is there
any documentation on these error codes? Of course not. So it seems that this
line of investigation in trying to improve the speed of visualizers has come
to a grinding halt.

Seriously, has anyone else been having no end of problems trying to create
debugger visualisers which actually work, or is it just me?

What kind of projects are you developing?
if you are working on a windows project you will get no timeout at
all.
If you are testing a web XXX (site, service) then a timeout is part of
the equation.
Try to design it in such a way that you can apply tests to the logic
without having to run it in a web environment.

 

[Jeff Johnson]

Seriously, has anyone else been having no end of problems trying to create
debugger visualisers which actually work, or is it just me?

I wrote an image viewer way back when 2005 was still in beta and it worked
great. I guess it depends on the complexity of your visualizer.

 

[Clive Dixon]

Windows forms project. The timeout is imposed by the Visual Studio
debugger - if the visualizer does not complete its operation within a
certain time, then VS will abort the visualisation process and display an
error message box.

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