Update/refresh object in the VSCode watch panel programmatically from debug server - visual-studio-code

Question

I maintain a VSCode debugger extension for Roku's BrightScript language. Roku doesn't have a formal debug protocol, so my debugger uses the telnet command-line utility to issue various debugging commands (like print variable, continue, step, etc...). Since the Roku is a network device, and we are doing string parsing, every command is fairly slow compared to debugging an on-machine program like node or C#. As such, we try to lazy load data instead of eagerly loading data whenever possible.
Take this object for example:
business = {
employeeNames: ["Michael", "Jim", "Pam", "Dwight"],
name: "Dunder Mifflin Paper Company"
}
When a user adds business to the watch panel, vscode issues an evaluateRequest for "business". Behind the scenes, I run a telnet command print business, which returns the following:
<Component: roAssociativeArray> =
{
employeeNames: <Component: roArray>
name: "Dunder Mifflin Paper Company"
}
At this point, we know that employeeNames is an array, but we don't know its size, and shouldn't eagerly look up its size because that requires a separate command that would slow down the entire debugging experience.
Next, in the VSCode watch panel, the user expands the employeeNames property, and vscode calls variablesRequest. My debug extension runs the telnet command print business.employeeNames, and it returns this:
<Component: roArray> =
[
"Michael"
"Jim"
"Pam"
"Dwight"
]
At this point, I want to update employeeNames type to show the array count, like this:
Here's the DebugProtocol.Variable that I would change in the debug extension...but I don't know how to send this to VSCode when VSCode hasn't asked for updates on this variable.
//hardcoded for the sake of this question...is dynamic in actual code
var variableName = "business.employeeNames"
var arrayValues= getArrayValues(variableName); // ["Michael", "Jim", "Pam", "Dwight"]
let variable: DebugProtocol.Variable = {
name: "employeeNames";
evaluateName: "business.employeeNames";
type: `roArray (${arrayValues})`;
value: arrayValues;
children: [];
}
I tried to trick vscode into re-requesting everything, but VSCode didn't request new variables because it was smart enough to realize that the StoppedEvent was at the same location where it was previously stopped.
//send a continue
this.sendEvent(new ContinuedEvent(0, true));
//wait a short time
setTimeout(()=>{
//send a stopped event
this.sendEvent(new StoppedEvent('exception', threadId, exception.message));
}, 10);
As a debug extension author, from the debug extension code, how do I tell VSCode that a variable in the watch panel has changed, and needs to be refreshed?