Simply View Image for Python Debugging

This extension offers a powerful and versatile solution for visualizing images, plots, and tensors during Python debugging. It is designed to enhance your debugging workflow with a rich set of features.

Features

Image Viewer

A built-in, enhanced image viewer with the following capabilities:

Image Values

Display pixel values directly on the image.

Heatmap

Visualize images as heatmaps with customizable color maps and value clipping.

Labels

View label images with color mapping (e.g., 0=black, 1=red, etc.).

Plot Viewer

Visualize plots from various sources, including:

• matplotlib.pyplot.Figure
• matplotlib.pyplot.Axis
• Plotly Figures (requires saving backend, see here).

Tensor Viewer

Inspect tensors from PyTorch and NumPy.

• numpy.ndarray is treated as a tensor if it has 4 channels or 3 channels but does not qualify as a single image. Requires scikit-image.

Watch View

Monitor image, plot, or tensor variables and refresh the view at each breakpoint.

• Supports custom Python expressions (use with caution to avoid side effects).

Additional Features

• Hover over variables to view their shape (unrelated to the image viewer, but useful nonetheless).
• Open local image files (supports PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF) in the viewer.
  _{I find this feature useful for label images, as they often have small values (0, 1, etc.), which the default viewer does not enhance.}
• A colorbar for heatmap images with adjustable value clipping.
• Interactive Python cell support: Use the Variables tab and click the arrow next to a variable name to view the image.

Settings

Setting	Description	Default Value
svifpd.autoFetchImages	Controls whether images are automatically fetched. true: Automatically fetch images at each step. false: Fetch images only when the "Fetch Image" button is clicked. "pinned": Automatically fetch pinned images.	true
svifpd.restrictImageTypes	Restricts the types that are considered images. true: Only numpy is checked. false: All types are checked. This setting is useful for improving performance in some cases.	true

Q&A

Memory Issues

Problem: Memory usage increases significantly when using the extension.

Solution: Enable the restrictImageTypes setting (default: true).

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Extension Links

• VS Code Marketplace
• Open VSX Registry

Acknowledgment

This extension builds upon the foundational work of john-guo. While none of the original code remains, his project served as a valuable inspiration for this extension. Thank you, John!

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js: Ensure you have Node.js installed.
• Yarn: Install Yarn as the package manager.
• Rust: Required for building the webview.

Build Instructions

1. Install dependencies:

   yarn install

2. Build the project:

   yarn build