How to visualize strings in the QtCreator debugger variable window

[marip8]

Often, strings aren't visualized correctly in the Qt debugger variable window by default. This comment on the bug report provides a solution for visualizing them correctly.

Here is the relevant snippet from the report:

You can try to fix "/usr/share/qtcreator/debugger/stdtypes.py". As they use "hard-code assumption on member position" it seems like not working everywhere. In my case - Linux x64, gcc 9.1 it works exactly like you described: string not accessible

So find function def qdumpHelper_std__string(d, value, charType, format):

And change (size, alloc, refcount) = d.split("ppp", data - 3 * d.ptrSize()) to (size, alloc, refcount) = d.split("ppp", value.address() + d.ptrSize())

Also comment d.check(0 <= size and size <= alloc and alloc <= 100*1000*1000) ...

Note, the file qtcreator/debugger/stdtypes.py is located in the directory where QtCreator was installed, which may or may not be /usr/share depending on how you installed QtCreator

[christian-rauch]

How is this related to the ROS plugin? Isn't this something that has to be fixed in Qt Creator itself?

[marip8]

This post was intended as helpful pointer for an issue I (and many of my coworkers) have run into using QtCreator. This plugin is our entry point into QtCreator, so I thought the discussions page would be a convenient place to put tips like this.

We have similar tips (about enabling the debugger, etc.) in the docs for this repo. Maybe we should ultimately move this tip there as well.

[christian-rauch]

Ok. I initially thought you placed this in the wrong repo.

If you are interested in collecting these tips and having them conveniently available via this repo somehow, you could add them to the wiki (https://github.com/ros-industrial/ros_qtc_plugin/wiki).