Custom views of smart pointer objects in visual studio?

Question

I need to use smart pointers for an application which has several hierarchy of classes. One difficulty while debug the code is the view of smart pointers (e.g. unique_ptr) inside the watch windows of Visual Studio 2015. It always shows [ptr], [deleter] and [Raw View]at the same time, while I mostly care about seeing quickly the content of [ptr] when expanding the view for the pointer. Is there a way to make debugging easier and customize the view of displaying the content of smart pointer to become same as raw pointers in visual Studio 2015? I know that this should be doable by using the appropriate NavisFile, however I don't know how should the following NavisFile be modified to show the content of [ptr] ?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<AutoVisualizer xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/vstudio/debugger/natvis/2010"> 

  <Type Name="std::unique_ptr&lt;*&gt;">
      <SmartPointer Usage="Minimal">_Mypair._Myval2</SmartPointer>
      <DisplayString Condition="_Mypair._Myval2 == 0">empty</DisplayString>
      <DisplayString Condition="_Mypair._Myval2 != 0">unique_ptr {*_Mypair._Myval2}</DisplayString>
      <Expand>
          <Item Condition="_Mypair._Myval2 != 0" Name="[ptr]">_Mypair._Myval2</Item>
      </Expand>
  </Type>


</AutoVisualizer> 

Answer 1

I am no expert, but it seems like you could simply remove the <Expand> node, and then change the second <DisplayString> to display just _Mypair._Myval2, eg:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<AutoVisualizer xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/vstudio/debugger/natvis/2010"> 

  <Type Name="std::unique_ptr&lt;*&gt;">
      <SmartPointer Usage="Minimal">_Mypair._Myval2</SmartPointer>
      <DisplayString Condition="_Mypair._Myval2 == 0">empty</DisplayString>
      <DisplayString Condition="_Mypair._Myval2 != 0">_Mypair._Myval2</DisplayString>
  </Type>


</AutoVisualizer>