Any way to view a value tree?

General JUCE discussion
1

Hi, is there a way to easily print out a value tree to see all of its contents?
It is practically impossible to click through the variabes section of visual studio.

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2

There is a great tool for this in the juce-toys, GitHub - jcredland/juce-toys: Debugging utilities in a JUCE Module, plus NatVis and LLDB customizations. Follow the instructions to install the juce.natvis file, and you will have a much better view of ValueTrees, and a number of other JUCE containters.

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3

Thanks, this is really useful!

4

The juce-toys thing is great, though I think I remember having to modify the files a bit before I could get it to work.

If you’re looking for something simpler, then you can use valueTree.toXmlString() to print ValueTrees as XML.

Personally, I have set up a global function like this:

void printVT(ValueTree toPrint)
{
    static const Identifier printTest("xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx");

    toPrint.setProperty(printTest, "x", nullptr);

    DBG(toPrint.getRoot().toXmlString());

    toPrint.removeProperty(printTest, nullptr);
}

This prints the whole tree and puts a marker on the node that you’re looking at. It’s pretty crude, but very useful for debugging.

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5

@LiamG I actually updated the juce-toys a while back and submitted a PR which fixed them (along with other changes to juce containers). But, you are also right, in that there are instances where dumping the whole thing makes sense.

6

Do you know if this kind of tool exist for Xcode? juce-toys seems to be made for Visual Studio only.

7

I think the juce-toys has one for xcode as well, juce_lldb_xcode.py., but I did not update it as I did the VS one. Hopefully Jim will update it, but if not, I suspect I eventually do it to, as I do cross platform work, and I always bemoan this missing in xcode.

8

Thanks! I’m sorry I didn’t see this file :sweat_smile:

9

I was never able to get this working in XCode, or didn’t understand what it was supposed to add and how to access it properly.

10

I need to take a swing at it. if I do I will post an update here, with any extra info on getting it setup.

2 Likes
11

Hey @cpr2323(/all), can you help me get the .natvis for juce-toys to stay registered in my jucer file?

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but it just won’t save the solution after I add it. I have a clone of juce-toys in my user modules folder. I add the module to the projucer file with a local copy. It copies the files into JUCE Library Code/modules/jcf_debug, as expected.

I then copy over the juce.natvis file into the jcf_debug. Right click on my solution, add existing item, it seems to load properly (according to the docs, this happens automatically in VS2022).

But there are no changes I can commit and when I close/reopen VS2022, the natvis file is deleted natvis file is only saved if I add it to the global jfc_debug folder (makes sense as juce.natvis is at the repo level, one directory above the module itself).

How do we add solution-level files in projucer? I only have “Fonts” and “Source” directories in the File Explorer tab, and no relevant options in the Modules tab.

Cheers! :smiley:

edit: I got this working by including the .natvis in my VS2022 installation folder. For me, the file goes in Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers. This is the 5th location identified under “Natvis file locations” in the docs I linked.

After that I had to set
JUCE_MODAL_LOOPS_PERMITTED 1
in the file juce_PlatformDefs.h (for my overall Juce installation; hopefully this doesn’t cause any problems later) to get the example code running. Now that it is proven I’ll be able to incorporate juce-toys in my project!