There is project that contains a bunch of XML files. Those files can be used to improve debugging on MSVC:

For example: * using this project debug view of `boost::variant i(1);` will show `1` instead of raw memory and internals of boost::variant. * optionalboost::container::string will show string content or `none` instead of ram memory and some unreadable internals

The files on the Wiki are out of date and don't work with current VC++, for what it's worth I have a bunch of visualizers for VC12 sitting on my hard drive that I've been meaning to do something with.

Maybe we should embed those files into the Boost? It would be great to have some magic bjam command `b2 install-debug` after which VisualStudio becomes aware of Boost classes.

I'm ambivalent about whether these need to part of the official Boost distribution - though I don't see why not.

Files for pretty debugging could be also written for GDB. Will it be useful?

Yes, but how are they installed into GDB?

Link o the project: https://github.com/KindDragon/CPPDebuggerVisualizers Files are located at https://github.com/KindDragon/CPPDebuggerVisualizers/tree/master/VS2013/Visu...

Ah I see - you've updated the original visualizers - great! I'll submit a few more then ;-) My only (minor) quibble is that the project contains visualizers for things not in Boost, but this is definitely a great idea. Thanks for these, John.