Debug Visualizer

I'm not sure if this is possible but everytime I think that, someone comes a long and says, "oh we've been doing that for years." So here goes...

I'm looking for a tool that while debugging, I can get a visual on the current objects in memory, the variables (or references) pointing to those objects and be able to see new objects being created, pointers being pointed at other objects and maybe even see an overview of your memory and how much each object is taking up.

Any ideas? If there's not something out there, does .NET have any support in the bcl for something like it?

Thanks in advance,
Josh

Read about Debugger Visualisers in the MSDN documentation.

Yeah, my bad, I must have been having a caffeine crash.

If you're using .net, you could probably use the CLR profiler to capture lots of information like this. It shows some pretty interesting stuff like the memory layout and such.

If only the profiling api wasn't unmanaged, would be easier to whip up some WPF visualizations.  But it makes sense I guess.

littleguru wrote:



nightski wrote: If only the profiling api wasn't unmanaged, would be easier to whip up some WPF visualizations.  But it makes sense I guess.

DotTrace uses that API and is a managed application...

Well you have to write the profiling component as an in process COM server.  Then you could use interop to interact with it.  Definately possible, just not something I could whip up in a few hours hehe.  Someone with more experience with COM maybe