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@SougandhS SougandhS commented Oct 19, 2025

This PR introduces a new feature in the Expressions view that allows expressions to be pinned to a specific stack frame, ensuring their values remain visible and consistent even when switching between threads or stack frames or even launches. This enhancement improves the debugging experience by preventing frequent <error on evaluation> issues (if one wishes to see the variables/expressions again) and enables developers to track and compare expressions or variables (by watch) across different contexts more effectively.

image

Pinned expressions will be highlighted with Bold and italics image

This can be removed/unpinned manually or will be removed/unpinned if context not available image
My.Movie.mp4

(apologies for the poor video quality - had to compress the size below 10 MB)

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github-actions bot commented Oct 19, 2025

Test Results

 1 947 files  ±0   1 947 suites  ±0   1h 37m 22s ⏱️ + 1m 47s
 4 721 tests ±0   4 697 ✅ ±0   24 💤 ±0  0 ❌ ±0 
14 163 runs  ±0  13 996 ✅ ±0  167 💤 ±0  0 ❌ ±0 

Results for commit c805888. ± Comparison against base commit 7c90789.

♻️ This comment has been updated with latest results.

This commit add a new option to pin an expression with current active
context, making the expression always be evaluating with the pinned
context
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@mickaelistria mickaelistria left a comment

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I don''t think the workflow demonstrated in the video is satisfying. It has many usability quirks:

  • the feedback that the value is pinned to a particular context (only bold) is not explicit; The context on which the evaluation is applied should be made more explicit
  • When an expression is pinned to a context, it's easily possible to get the value from another context
  • The fact that we can't see the values side-by-side makes it complex to compare different complex values

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  • the feedback that the value is pinned to a particular context (only bold) is not explicit; The context on which the evaluation is applied should be made more explicit

Additional label can be provided 👍

  • When an expression is pinned to a context, it's easily possible to get the value from another context

But in different launches it will be difficult.

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2 participants