As mentioned in my previous post on dzDebugVisualizer I was thinking about writing a generalized debug visualizer which can be user-configured to register itself for any data type. Well, that debug visualizer now exists. It's part of dzDebugVisualizer and called "Universal Visualizer for Delphi". It has got a configuration page in the Tools -> Options … Continue reading Universal Debug Visualizer for Delphi →

After playing around with debug visualizers, I found that there is a very simple way to provide a visualiser for many record types: Just add a special method (I called it Dump) to those records that returns a string that you can then evaluate in the debugger and display in the debug windows. There are … Continue reading Simplified Debug Visualizers for all my TNullableTypes →

My dzlib contains several nullable data types which internally use an interface field to maintain the IsValid value as originally suggested by Alan Bauer in a post on his long defunct Codegear blog "The Oracle at Delphi". Today I added debug vizualizers for these types to my dzDebugVisualizer package. Rather than showing the two fields … Continue reading Debug visualizers for my TNullable types →

The (multi-line) string Debug Visualizer previously available for Delphi 2005 to 2007 is now also implemented for Delphi 10.2 using the OTAPI interface. It shows the content of a string without quotes and with line breaks if it contains any. The implementation was much more complex than I thought. Originally I just used a simple … Continue reading (Multi line) string Debug Visualizer for Delphi 10.2 →

I just extended my dzDebugVisualizer package to include a TColor debug visualizer for Delphi 10.2 and Delphi 12. With little change these will probably work for every Delphi Version that supports the neccessary ToolsApi functions, meaning >= Delphi 2010. This is completely different code than I used before, but it still shows the color name(s) … Continue reading TColor debug visualizer for Delphi 10.2 and 12 →

After making the source code of dzDebugVisualizer available I got interested in Debug Visualizers in general and had a look at how they are supported in Delphi 11. I wrote a visualizer for TColor, based on an old EDN article (now only in the Internet Archive). And after that I simply added that functionality to … Continue reading added support for TColor and Local Variables to dzDebugVisualizer →

A new test release of my dzDebugVisualizers for Delphi 2005, 2006 and 2007 is available. Apart from fixing an Access Violation when unloading the package I have added support for TDateTime and unquoted (multiline) strings to the Evaluate / Modify window: In addition I have added a "Modifiers" button to the dialog which allows to … Continue reading dzDebugVisualizers for Delphi 2005, 2006 and 2007 →

The Delphi Open Tools API introduced Debug Visualizers with Delphi 2010, so people stuck with a pre-Unicode Delphi IDE can not use them. Until now that is. An answer on StackOverflow by MartynA provided me with a starting point, but I used a different approach because I didn't like how getting the value overwrote the … Continue reading dzDebugVisualizers for Delphi 2005, 2006 and 2007 →