D on Visual Studio?

[Martin Fuchs]

> There is DDBG that works under code blocks. Most of item a is available 
> and much of item b is there but not integrated (expression work but aren't 
> available from the IDE, watches don't work etc.)
>
> There is room for improvment but it's a start

Well, I tried Code::Blocks and the DDBG integration with the current 
development snapshot.
First of all I must say, I had some hassles setting up the environment to 
build and debug a test program:

- There was missing the -g linker option in the default debug settings of 
Code::Blocks.

- To configure the debugger I had to specify the GDB wrapper script 
"ddbg_gdb.bat" instead of "ddbg.exe" itself in code block's toolchain 
configuration.


OK, now I can build D programs and launch thd ddbg debugger in Code::Blocks.
But what I am still missing is:

You can't see the contents of all varaiables. For example it isn't even 
possible to display strings and array variables in the watch window.
This is what I described in my initial post. So again: What exactly is the 
problem - Is there only missing some extension to display complex types in 
the debugger or is the information completely missing in the debug 
information generated by the compiler? If it's only a debugger display 
program, it's only a matter of time when the goal will be reached. In the 
second case it might require a completely new debug info format. So the 
compiler *and* the debugger would require some rewrite.