[support]

Hi,

Please try using this build: http://sysprogs.com/files/tmp/VisualGDB-5.3.7.1746.msi

It will display the path that caused the exception.

[support]

Hi,

It looks like your trial period has expired. In order to continue using VisualGDB you would need to purchase a license.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback, we will consider adding a new tutorial about troubleshooting the type visualizer issues.

You can diagnose the lockups by checking the GDB Session window (enable the timing mode to see the time consumed by each command) or the diagnostic gdb logs (can be enabled via Advanced GDB Settings).

Visual Studio supports custom expression viewers (e.g. see the VS HTML viewer) that are displayed when you click the magnifying glass icon on the expression. VisualGDB does not directly support this, however we could easily add one of the  2 options:

• Let you export your implementation of the VS interfaces via your type visualizer
• Extend our type visualizer API to support easy WPF-based custom viewers (this would count as a custom paid feature as it’s very specific and relatively complex).

Let us know if you would like to proceed. If you would like to get a quote for extending the API, please contact us via the support form.

 

[support]

Yes.

[support]

Hi,

We are planning to look into address sanitizer within the next few weeks, although it may end up generating too much overhead for any reasonable scenarios. We will post an update here once we support it.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks, this looks like our bug. VisualGDB should normally filter out the “: public …” part. We will investigate and fix it in one of the next builds (this will break compatibility with the current workaround though).

Probe() doesn’t get called if only one visualizer matches the expression via triggers. This is done to reduce the overhead that Probe() might cause (by running extra gdb commands).

[support]

Hi,

Thanks, we will look into showing stack usage in Embedded Memory Explorer (although the values reported by gcc won’t be not 100% accurate – library functions and indirect calls won’t be included).

With SWO, our real-time watch actually supports custom transports, so if you could write a plugin converting your SWO output into the real-time watch event protocol, VisualGDB would display your events in the real-time watch window and reuse the rest of the GUI and the saving/loading functionality. We could certainly help you get it to work.

[support]

Hi,

We try to release the preview builds every 1-2 weeks to get fast feedback on the new features, so please always use the latest available preview.

There are no known problems with ESP32 and VisualGDB 5.3 Preview 6 (or 7).

[support]

No problem. Could be some framework library corrupt that would prevent the plugins from loading properly. Either way, if you encounter further problems, feel free to contact us again and we will help.

[support]

Hi,

Unfortunately various linker input-related flags used by gcc are quite confusing and it looks like you are using the -L input (library search directories) incorrectly. Please refer to the following page for an overview of the related settings: http://visualgdb.com/support/linkerinputs/

[support]

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know that we have added support for embedded integration tests to VisualGDB 5.3 Preview 7. The tests use a mechanism similar to what you described – VisualGDB will record your actions while you step through the program, let you add custom checks and then automatically reply recorded actions when running the tests. Feel free to give it a try and let us know if you miss any functionality.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed overview. Offline disassembly viewer is a feature we are planning to add to next major VisualGDB release (preview is expected mid-Fall 2017). We have done some preliminary experiments with Visual Studio functionality for advanced code annotations (used by Code Lens) and will experiment with displaying useful per-function information (like memory footprint, stack sizes, etc) with it directly in the code.

Regarding ReSharper, most of the troubles come from the fact that ReSharper comes with its own IntelliSense engine that expects to work on top of the regular VS engine. So you simply cannot use ReSharper and Clang IntelliSense at the same time unless ReSharper is modified to check for a different underlying engine (that most likely won’t be the case as VisualGDB projects are a tiny fraction of the projects they are targeting). You can try disabling Clang IntelliSense globally or for a specific project, but then ReSharper would encounter trouble parsing GCC-specific extensions like “struct foo bar = {.field1 = 1, .field2 = 2}”. Some of those issues could be worked around by redefining problematic keywords with #define-s via an IntelliSense-only header file, although the only 100% working solution would be to ship special versions of all SDKs (like STM32CubeMX) specifically edited to remove any incompatible extensions and this is unfortunately beyond what we can reasonably provide.

If you would like to use ReSharper for your projects, we could provide more insight on how VisualGDB handles include paths and defines to ensure ReSharper can find them, although reliable and seamless operation won’t be possible due to the fundamental incompatibility between ReSharper and GCC-specific syntax and there’s not much for VisualGDB to do here other than offer an independent IntelliSense engine that is specifically designed to work with that syntax. Sorry.

Regarding other features:

• Our code formatter includes a lot of advanced options on top of what VS offers, so usually you can customize it easily. If not, just let us know what tweaks you are missing and we will help you locate them or will add them.
• If you are using J-Link, you can easily enable SWO viewing by adding “monitor SWO EnableTarget” to the GDB startup commands and configuring VisualGDB to connect to the J-Link SWO port via telnet (see the Raw Terminal page of VisualGDB Project Properties). It won’t display anything beyond simple text output, however if you have a few scenarios in mind where visualization could make sense of the SWO data, we will definitely appreciate them and will consider supporting them.
• VisualGDB does provide a way to analyze the memory footprint of your program. It’s called Embedded Memory Explorer and can show detailed information on memory usage. E.g. see this tutorial. It doesn’t display stack usage yet, although we will consider supporting it in the next VisualGDB version.

Hopefully this helps. Let us know if you have any further questions.

[support]

Hi,

We are sorry about the inconvenience you are experiencing. We do actually provide a basic reference on the type visualizer-related API: http://visualgdb.com/SDK/reference and the documentation XML files are shipped with VisualGDB, so Visual Studio should automatically display the help for all common methods and types when you are viewing them via IntelliSense.

Either way, we will try to help you pinpoint this by sharing some insight into how the filters work.

VisualGDB uses two-step matching to find expression filters. First it checks if the expression type contains any of the triggers exported by the filters. Trigger matching is a simple case-sensitive substring search. I.e. masks like “Vector<*>” won’t work when entered in the triggers.

The second step of the matching is calling the Probe() method so that the filter can check the expression against an arbitrary set of conditions (e.g. regular expressions). This step is easy to debug by placing a breakpoint inside your Probe() implementation and stepping through it to see why it is not succeeding.

If you experience troubles with getting your filters loaded, the problem could happen in one of the 3 places:

• Your filter is being filtered out due to triggers
• Your filter’s Probe() method does not return a valid value
• Your filter successfully attaches, but does not actually filter the expression correctly

You can easily pinpoint the location of the problem by reducing the triggers to something trivial (or just an empty string to get triggered for every variable) and stepping through the Probe() method. Please also check the outer Visual Studio’s Output log for information on thrown exceptions. If your filter accidentally throws an exception during initialization, VisualGDB would simply skip using the filter.

If this does not help, please let us know what you observe (i.e. which methods of your filter are called and what do you observe in VS) and we will help you sort it out.

[support]

Hi,

This could happen if some files were in use. Please try deleting the toolchain manually and then installing it again.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks for reporting this, please try this build: http://sysprogs.com/files/tmp/VisualGDB-5.3.6.1733.msi

[Author]

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