VB.NET Debug Visualizer for Guids for Visual Studio 2010

Every once in a while I must program in VB.NET. My largest frustration is how Visual Studio handles Guids while debugging VB.NET code.

Seeing "System.Guid" as the value for a variable that contains a Guid is really not helpful. Debugging in C# correctly displays the actual value in the same situation.

Visual Studio provides an avenue to rectify this issue. You can create a new class library project and replace the contents of the default class file with the below code snippet.

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<Assembly: DebuggerDisplay("{ToString()}", Target:=GetType(Guid))>   Public Class EmptyGuidVisualizerClass     ' Empty End Class

After compiling, copy the DLL to "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Visualizers" and restart Visual Studio. The Guids should resolve to their actual values.

After installing this in Visual Studio 2010, I found that it also works in Visual Studio 2008. The DLL should, likewise, be placed in the Visualizers directory in the Visual Studio 2008 folder in My Documents.

I created a batch file that can be used to install the DLL for 2010 and 2008. The batch file and the DLL must be in the same directory.

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@ECHO OFF SET STARTDIR=%CD%   pushd .   cd "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents"   IF EXIST ".\Visual Studio 2008" ( pushd . echo "2008 Exists!" cd ".\Visual Studio 2008"   IF NOT EXIST ".\Visualizers" (  echo "Creating Visualizers Directory."  mkdir Visualizers )   copy "%STARTDIR%\GuidVisualizer.dll" .\Visualizers   popd )   IF EXIST ".\Visual Studio 2010" ( pushd . echo "2010 Exists!" cd ".\Visual Studio 2010"   IF NOT EXIST ".\Visualizers" (  echo "Creating Visualizers Directory."  mkdir Visualizers )   copy "%STARTDIR%\GuidVisualizer.dll" .\Visualizers   popd )   popd

After creating it, I googled and found someone who came up with almost the same code, http://www.michelrenaud.com/?p=7 . This blog post contains pictures if you care to see the end result. Microsoft Connect has a similar resolved issue: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/89801/show-guid-value-in-debug.