I have some more updates to the Natvis implementation in Boost.Unordered. Now we can visualize any container with an allocator that uses fancy pointers, as long as the fancy pointer has the proper customization points defined. The Natvis file itself has instructions on how to add support for your own fancy pointer type, if you so choose. ( https://github.com/boostorg/unordered/blob/develop/extra/boost_unordered.nat... ) I have another article, this time about the Natvis implementation for the open-addressing containers, and the challenges of adding fancy pointer support. I outline how to define the customization points for the user-injected behaviour of the fancy pointer types. (Plus there's a bonus section where I wrote the fast inverse square root function in a Natvis intrinsic.) Just like last time, these are a lot of things I wish I knew earlier. Hopefully this article can help someone else learn. Link to the article: https://blog.ganets.ky/NatvisForUnordered2/ Thanks On Mon, 3 Jun 2024 at 12:25, Braden Ganetsky wrote:

Hi everyone,

This is my first message on the ML. I've written visualizations in the Visual Studio Natvis framework for the Boost.Unordered containers and iterators. This will improve the user experience for anyone using Visual Studio. The visualizations mirror those of the STL unordered containers as closely as possible, except that end iterators display as "{ end iterator }" instead of the visualization just breaking.

Here is the file: https://github.com/boostorg/unordered/blob/develop/extra/boost_unordered.nat...

I've written an accompanying article about the natvis implementation for the closed-addressing containers. I will be writing a second article about the implementation for the open-addressing containers. This first article contains some tips and tricks for using the natvis framework that I wish I knew before going into this, especially about using "<Intrinsic>" elements. Hopefully it can help someone else.

Link to the article: https://blog.ganets.ky/NatvisForUnordered/

Custom gdb pretty-printers will be next up.

Thank you to Joaquín for reviewing the code and the article.

Thanks all, Braden Ganetsky