Exposing Additonal Type Information in the Debugger

Sunday, October 12, 2003 3:11:24 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

Use mcee_cs.dat (found at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\Common7\Packages\Debugger\) to expose addtional type information in the debugger. If you have used C++ in the past, this is the equivalant to the autoexp.dat. There is very little documentation in MSDN. However it is pretty easy to add type information to the mcee_cs.dat file. By doing this, additional information will be added to the watch / locals and debugger ToolTips during debugging. The mcee_cs.dat. changes are only read at startup, so if you make changes while the IDE is open, you will need to shut it down and restart it.

Unfortunately the mcee_cs.dat is very limited. You may only call properties of the type ( no methods ). I also found that VSTweak has the ability to edit the mcee_cs.dat file (although the implemenation is still a bit rough).  I would suggest editing by hand. You can find the VS Power Toys (which includes VSTweak) for the IDE on GotDotNet.

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