[cdt-dev] Extending CDT so that "Details" variable format is the default

[Bruno Medeiros <bruno.do.medeiros@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello. I'm having another go at improving the CDT debugger integration in both a D and Go IDE.

I want to make it so that the default _expression_/variable format in the Variables view (and in the debug editor hover) is the "Details" format. (org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.mi.service.MIExpressions.DETAILS_FORMAT )

The reason for this is that in these languages there are several variables/types that when debugged in GDB, show meaningful values under the "Details" format, but non-meaningful or less useful values in other formats. See for example this screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/EoHJloH.png

Here we have a variable declared like this:
  string[3] staticArray = [ "one", "two", "three" ];

The details show up as: {"one", "two", "three"} , but the default format shows just the address of the variable.

A similar thing happens the "var" variable, for which the default is the useless {...} , but details is "blah" which is the contents of the var.

I tried to find a way to change this behavior but couldn't find any. I was looking at
https://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/cdt-debug-dsf-gdb-extensibility

and while extending GdbLaunchDelegate eventually allows to customize most core debug behavior, I couldn't find a way to easily customize UI related behavior.

Particularly, I looked at these classes/entry-points in the CDT code, to try to see if I could extend/customize them, but didn't find a way:
org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.gdb.internal.ui.viewmodel.GdbViewModelAdapter
org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.gdb.internal.ui.viewmodel.GdbVariableVMProvider
org.eclipse.cdt.dsf.debug.ui.viewmodel.numberformat.FormattedValueRetriever#doUpdateWithAvailableFormats

Any ideas? Did I miss something or is this not supported?

--
Bruno Medeiros