Introduction

For several years now I have been using a Visual Studio extension called ArrayDebugView by Joachim Eibl that allows you to plot the contents of a C++ array when stopped at a breakpoint within Visual Studio. This extension was designed for VS2005 and VS2008, yet I managed to get it running on VS2010.

ArrayDebugView by Joachim Eibl

 For years I found it very useful for development of signal processing algorithms. However, the interface is a bit clunky (has a broken tab order and is a modal dialog), and worst of all, it is NOT compatible with VS2012/2013 which our recent projects at work are now developed in. Furthermore, most of our development is now in C#.

Thus an update to ArrayDebugView was in order. Unfortunately the last release (1.42) was in early 2010. I attempted to rebuild the solution from source with the aim of making it compatible with VS2012/2013 but I did not have much success.

So I decided to develop my own array plotting debug extension, utilising the new Visual Studio Extension (VSIX) framework to ensure ease of installation. The main benefit is that I then have the ability to improve the functionality and include new features etc.

Keep your eyes out for ArrayPlotter in the Visual Studio Gallery soon!

ArrayPlotter by Rodney Thomson