microsoft
Image Watch extension
Feature Request
It would be nice if cpptools knew how to visualize images, something like Image Watch for Visual Studio:
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualCPPTeam.ImageWatch2019
Is this feature planned? Having a 100% compatibility with the extension would be amazing (support in natvis), but even if it would have to be configured differently it would still be super useful.
@Colengms @bobbrow This feature is the one most requested by our developers for VS Code. What are the chances that it will be implemented?
Hi @bebuch, unfortunately it is unlikely that we will implement this any time soon. We were very close to open sourcing the VS extension, but in the 11th hour the decision was reversed and put on hold again. In my opinion, I think the most likely path to getting an Image Watch extension in VS Code is for us to open source the original extension and have a non-Microsoft developer or team implement the VS Code extension after that happens.
Thank you very much for the information! It would indeed be great if the original extension were released as open source. Microsoft's open source products are mostly excellent, and the development process usually works extremely well. Surely many would be delighted to see another attempt to make it open source. 🤗
I'm still not sure what is a blocker here. In general it doesn't have to work exactly like ImageWatch (having it working is a miracle anyway). VScode would just need to have an option to see "pixels" defined by data, width, height, and a pixel format. This could have a much more general purpose use cases than images - think of visualizing hash table occupancy as an image, etc... and this all directly within vscode.
@kobalicek I can't really go into details on private business decisions, but that is what is blocking us right now. It's nothing technical.
I don't know if VS Code has any APIs right now that would let you visualize an image directly in the editor or in a tooltip, but I suspect there would be a way to render it in a web view if there is no other way.