[boost] Graphical debugging extension for VS2015 (Container, Geometry, Polygon, Variant, ...)

Subject: [boost] Graphical debugging extension for VS2015 (Container, Geometry, Polygon, Variant, ...)
From: Adam Wulkiewicz (adam.wulkiewicz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-09-15 21:15:26

Hi,

For some time now I've been thinking about extending the capabilities of 
a debugger and to visualize data in more convenient way than the raw 
numbers. It's obvious to me that in many cases variables could be 
graphically visualized, in many cases this is the "natural" 
representation, this would greately simplify the debugging. I haven't 
found anything like it so I've decided to play with the VS2015 
extensions, mostly because they're easy to write. This is what I came up 
with (see the readme):

https://github.com/awulkiew/graphical-debugging

Besides adding commonly used native visualizers for types from some 
Boost libraries it allows to display their graphical representation. The 
extension support Boost.Geometry models and other types used internally 
in this library, Boost.Polygon models (polygon_set_data is missing) and 
boost::variant storing geometries. As a bonus, it's possible to watch 
containers of values (some STL containers as well as boost::array and 
contiguous containers from Boost.Container) as charts.

Maybe if there were enough interest it'd be worth to extend it and/or to 
add to the official VS extensions gallery. I'm a Boost.Geometry 
developer so in the future I plan to support all of the coordinate 
systems supported by the library, maybe other internals and basically 
anything that helps me with the development. But I can imagine that 
variables of types from various Boost libraries could also be 
visualized, e.g. Polygon's voronoi diagram and internals, Math's 
quaternions as 3D Axis-Angle, std::complex as a point on a plane, 
containers of complex numbers and in general arbitrary types represented 
somehow as a 1D, 2D or 3D objects, CircularBuffer e.g. as a pie chart, 
BGL's graphs, maybe GIL's images, Interprocess' shared memory blocks?, 
etc. So feel free to share suggestions and contribute if you like.

Regards,
Adam