It’s probably about time to consider using a markup language like HTML in WinDbg output. I use the kernel debugger mostly for instrumentation, and it would be cool if there was an instrumentation mode where marked up output would be displayed in a new type of WinDbg output window; separate from the normal output window.
Jamey_Kirby wrote:
It’s probably about time to consider using a markup language like HTML in WinDbg output. I use the kernel debugger mostly for instrumentation, and it would be cool if there was an instrumentation mode where marked up output would be displayed in a new type of WinDbg output window; separate from the normal output window.
Show me an example of a what it would look like if you had your wish,
because I can’t visualize it. WinDbg already supports a limited amount
markup; that’s how you can put clickable links into your debug output to
suggest followup commands.
In my mind, however, I cannot imagine wasting time trying to embed red,
flashing, bold text, paragraph alignment markers, and spinning logo
images into my debug output. The goal, after all, is to debug code, not
to produce quality desktop publishing.
windbg already supports DML, the “debugger markup language”. But I guess you want something a lot richer than just making text bold and italic.
!ndiskd.netreport is some effort in that direction, although it was a ton of work to put that together, and I doubt that most debugger extensions would go through the trouble. If you want to build a beautiful report using a language like HTML, then I suggest you just use HTML like ndiskd did.
But instead of expecting each debugger extension to build a beautiful reporting GUI, the debugger team is trying to get extensions to expose their innards directly into the “debugger data model”. This establishes a separation between data & view. Presumably, then, the next phase of their master plan is building rich and awesome views, once all this great data is available.
But the conversion to “debugger data model” does seem to be going slowly, because spending time tinkering with a debugger extension is, realistically speaking, the last thing on everyone’s todo list.
I’m not sure if this is what you are looking for but there is the kd extension called blwdbgue which is quite nice. I hope it helps http://kdext.com/extensions/uienh_mchl.html