Stack Trace and Value Formatting

Stack Trace and Value Formatting

Visual Studio provides options that let the user configure how stack traces and values are displayed. These settings are provided to the debug adapter via the ValueFormat and StackFrameFormat objects. The debug adapter should use the provided settings to format the value provided to Visual Studio.

Required Implementation

To support custom value formatting, a debug adapter must:

• Return true for the supportsValueFormattingOptions field in the Capabilities object returned in response to the initialize request.
• Use the values provided in the ValueFormat and StackTraceFormat objects to format stack traces and values as requested.

ValueFormat Object

A ValueFormat object is provided as a format argument to the evaluate, setExpression, setVariable, and variable requests, and contains the following fields:

Name	Type	Description
hex	boolean	Indicates that values should be provided in base-16.
rawValue	boolean	Indicates that string values should not have any formatting applied. For instance, newlines should not be replaced with a string like "\n".

StackFrameFormat Object

A StackFrameFormat object is provided as a format argument to the stackTrace request, and contains the following fields:

Name	Type	Description
hex	boolean	Indicates that values should be provided in base-16.
parameters	boolean	Indicates that parameters should be included.
parameterTypes	boolean	Indicates that parameter types should be included.
parameterNames	boolean	Indicates that parameter names should be included.
parameterValues	boolean	Indicates that parameter values should be included.
line	boolean	Indicates that the line number should be included.
module	boolean	Indicates that the module name should be included.
includeAll	boolean	Indicates that all stack frames should be included, even those the debug adapter might otherwise hide.

If no format argument is provided, the debug adapter should use its default formatting behavior.

Example

Assume the existance of a method called MyMethod, with an integer parameter parameter1 and a boolean parameter parameter2, defined in the module MyModule. If this method called with parameters "42" and "false", the corresponding stack frame could be formatted as follows:

hex	parameters	parameterTypes	parameterNames	parameterValues	line	module	Example StackFrame.name value provided by adapter
false	false	false	false	false	false	false	MyMethod
false	false	false	false	false	true	true	MyModule!MyMethod Line 3
false	true	false	false	false	true	true	MyModule!MyMethod() Line 3
false	true	true	false	false	true	true	MyModule!MyMethod(int, bool) Line 3
false	true	true	true	false	true	true	MyModule!MyMethod(int parameter1, bool parameter2) Line 3
false	true	true	true	true	true	true	MyModule!MyMethod(int parameter1 = 42, bool parameter2 = false) Line 3
true	true	true	true	true	false	false	MyMethod(int parameter1 = 0x2A, bool parameter2 = false)