Next gen debugger does not work well with typedefs inside structs

[timothygiraffe]

Hi all - i’m having an issue with a case where a typedef is used to create a type, and this is then used inside a struct. It seems that in this case the visual studio next gen cuda debugger is not able to show the typedef’d variables correctly.

Note that it only seems to be a problem if the typedef is used inside a struct. If it’s used as a standalone variable it seems to work ok.

Here is a minimal example:

#include "cuda_runtime.h"
#include "device_launch_parameters.h"

#include <iostream>

void checkCudaError(cudaError_t result)
{
    if (result != cudaSuccess)
    {
        std::cout << "ERROR: " << result << std::endl;
    }
}

typedef unsigned int uint;

struct SPairToAdd
{
    uint a;
    unsigned int b;
};

__global__ void addPairsKernel(uint *sumsOut, const SPairToAdd *pairsIn, unsigned int numPairs)
{
    unsigned int index = threadIdx.x;
    if (index >= numPairs)
    {
        return;
    }

    SPairToAdd myPair = pairsIn[index];

    //put debugger breakpoint on next line.
    //the 'a' member of the pair is not displayed
    //correctly but the 'b' member is.
    sumsOut[index] = myPair.a + myPair.b;
}

int main()
{
    checkCudaError(cudaSetDevice(0));

    SPairToAdd hostPair;
    hostPair.a = 1;
    hostPair.b = 2;

    SPairToAdd* devicePair = nullptr;
    checkCudaError(cudaMalloc(&devicePair, sizeof(SPairToAdd)));
    checkCudaError(cudaMemcpy(devicePair, &hostPair, sizeof(SPairToAdd), cudaMemcpyHostToDevice));

    unsigned int* deviceSum = nullptr;
    checkCudaError(cudaMalloc(&deviceSum, 1 * sizeof(unsigned int)));

    addPairsKernel << <1, 1>>> (deviceSum, devicePair, 1);
    checkCudaError(cudaDeviceSynchronize());

    unsigned int hostSum;
    checkCudaError(cudaMemcpy(&hostSum, deviceSum, 1 * sizeof(unsigned int), cudaMemcpyDeviceToHost));

    std::cout << hostSum << std::endl;
    
    checkCudaError(cudaFree(devicePair));
    checkCudaError(cudaFree(deviceSum));

    return 0;
}

In the above example, the ‘SPairToAdd’ struct has a member ‘a’ which is a typedef and a member ‘b’ which is a straightforward type. When putting a breakpoint in the code at the commented position, the ‘a’ member is not visible in the debugger correctly but the ‘b’ member is.

I have tested this using nsight visual studio version 2020.2.1 and earlier versions. My gpu is RTX2070 and i’m using visual studio 2019 and windows 10 and cuda toolkit 11.1 .

Any suggestions or workarounds would be appreciated.