Process Picker: Pick process id from file

[rheaditi]

Issue Type: Feature Request

Hey guys!

Thanks for an awesome debugging experience. 💙

I'd previously posted a question on SO (currently unanswered at the time of this request) about debugging processes started by pm2.

tl;dr of the problem is: a process started by pm2 is not showing up in the debugger's pick process dialogue (for Attach to Node Process) for some reason. Since I'm running my server in watch mode every time I make a change I've to manually copy the process id back-and-forth for now. 😅

Feature Request:
Allow for a way for the launch configuration to pick a process to watch by fetching the pid from a file.
pm2 already maintains a pid file at a configured path.
This would be really helpful!

Thanks again :)

VS Code version: Code 1.23.1 (d0182c3, 2018-05-10T16:03:31.083Z)
OS version: Darwin x64 17.5.0

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Process Picker: Newer processes should be on top of the list (#46766)
• Test: improved process picker (#46582)

[roblourens]

Good suggestion. An extension could do this using registerDebugConfigurationProvider. I don't know whether it should be in node-debug or not. @weinand

[weinand]

@rheaditi there are many different ways how this problem could be tackled.

Here is a very simple one:

Just create an extension "pm2support" that implements a command pm2support.readPid that reads the pid and returns it as a string.

In your launch config you can use this command like this:

		{
			"type": "node",
			"request": "attach",
			"name": "Attach to pm2",
			"processId": "${command:pm2support.readPid}"
		},

and the code for the "pm2support" extension is this:

import * as vscode from 'vscode';

export function activate(context: vscode.ExtensionContext) {
  context.subscriptions.push(vscode.commands.registerCommand('pm2support.readPid', () => {
	let pid = // read pid from file
    return String(pid);
  }));
}

If you want to get really fancy, you could even watch for changes of the pid-file, create a launch config on the fly, fill in the pid and start a debug session....

[vscodebot]

We try to keep VS Code lean and we think the functionality you're asking for is great for a VS Code extension. Maybe you can already find one that suits you in the VS Code Marketplace. Just in case, in a few simple steps you can get started writing your own extension. See also our issue reporting guidelines.

Happy Coding!