Create a VS 2005 Debugging Visualizer

Ken Tucker — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 19:37:43 GMT

Create a VS 2005 Debugging Visualizer

Visual Studio 2005 visualizers allow you to see the data contained in a variable. For this example we will create a visualizer to see the value of a guid. To create a visualizer we need to start with a class library project. Add a reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers and System.Windows.Forms. Set the build output path in the compile tab of my project to My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Visualizers.

Imports Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers
Imports System.Windows.Forms

<Assembly: DebuggerVisualizer(GetType(GuidVisualizer), target:=GetType(Guid), description:="Guid visualizer")>
Public Class GuidVisualizer
Inherits DialogDebuggerVisualizer

    Protected Overrides Sub Show(ByVal windowService As Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.IDialogVisualizerService, ByVal objectProvider As Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.IVisualizerObjectProvider)
        Dim g As Guid = CType(objectProvider.GetObject, Guid)
        MessageBox.Show(g.ToString)
    End Sub

End Class