kawale93 / expressiontreevisualizer

Debugging visualizer for expression trees

Expression Tree Visualizer

This project provides a custom debugging visualizer for expression trees, that can be used while debugging with Visual Studio (on Windows). The UI contains:

1. a graphical treeview of the expression tree structure,
2. source code representation of the tree, and
3. end nodes -- nodes in the tree which are not composed of other expressions: parameters, closure variables, constants and default values

There are multiple representations (a.k.a. "formatters") available:

Selection syncing:

• when selecting from the tree:

  

• from source code:

  

• and from end nodes:

  

For more information, see the wiki.

The UI components are also available as a NuGet package (targeting .NET Core 3.1 / .NET Framework 4.7.2), which you can use in your own projects

Requirements / Supports

The visualizer been tested with VS 2019 and VS 2017; theoretically the 2017 version should work with previous versions of VS.

It supports .NET Core, ,NET Framework, and any .NET Standard 2.0 implementation. (Note that .NET Framework < 4.7 may have issues in VS 2017.)

Installation

From the project's Releases page, download the ZIP file corresponding to your Visual Studio version (2019 or 2017). Then:

1. Unblock the ZIP file
2. Extract the files to the visualizers folder, preserving the required folder structure.

Uninstallation

To delete the visualizer:

1. Navigate to the visualizer location. This can be done by clicking on the About link, and then clicking on the ExpressionTreeVisualizer.dll link.
2. Delete all files and folders whose name starts with ExpressionTreeVisualizer. You can find these by typing name:ExpressionTreeVisualizer in the Windows search box.

Contributing / Feedback

• Test the visualizer. (The significance of this kind of contribution cannot be overestimated.)
• Suggest ideas and enhancements (via issues)
• Notify about bugs (via issues)
• Provide screenshots demonstrating different features of the visualizer (via issues), to be included in the README or wiki pages
• Star the project
• Spread the word
• Provide feedback to Microsoft about these limitations to the visualizer API

Credits

• John M. Wright's series on writing debugger visualizers
• Multiple-selection treeview is provided by MultiSelectTreeView
• ReadableExpressions for inspiration
• Greenshot and ScreenToGIF for the screenshots
• Fody and Costura