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Asked: 2026-05-10T23:58:55+00:00

I have created a debugger visualizer in VS2008. There are two classes i’ve made,

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I have created a debugger visualizer in VS2008. There are two classes i’ve made, in the same .dll :-

  • BinaryDataDebuggerVisualizer
  • ImageDebuggerVisualizer

The image one works fine (eg. the magnify glass appears in debug mode) but not for the byte[] one (BinaryDataDV). What my visualizer does is display the binary data as an image in a modal window (if the data is a legit image). I compiled to code in Release mode, then dropped the .dll into C:\Users\\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Visualizers

this is the code that i used to ‘define’ the vis…

using 

System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Drawing; using System.IO; using System.Windows.Forms; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers; using Foo.DebuggerVisualizers;    [assembly: DebuggerVisualizer(     typeof (BinaryDataDebuggerVisualizer),     typeof (VisualizerObjectSource),     Target = typeof (byte[]),     Description = 'Binary Data to Image Visualizer')]  namespace Foo.DebuggerVisualizers {     public class BinaryDataDebuggerVisualizer : DialogDebuggerVisualizer     {         protected override void Show(IDialogVisualizerService windowService,            IVisualizerObjectProvider objectProvider)         {             ... my code in here         }      } }

I’ve made a unit test in the debugger visualizer solution, which fires up and test the code .. which it correctly shows a legit (and also illegal) image files. so i believe the code is ok.

When i’m in my real solution, this is what i’m doing (where i expect the magnify glass to show, when i’m hovering over the variable in debug mode).

byte[] data = File.ReadAllBytes('Chick.jpg');

then i hover over the variable data when i’ve paused the code while debugging, on that line (using a breakpoint).

No hourglass 🙁

anyone have any ideas to what is wrong?

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1 Answer

  1. Unfortunately this is not possible. There is a limitation in the Debugger Visualizer framework that prevents them from functioning on array types or object.

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e2zc529c.aspx

    Quote from the page:

    "You can write a custom visualizer for an object of any managed class except for Object or Array"

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