Add support for starting a debug session from the command line

[fabiospampinato]

I like the debugger that comes with Code, and I'd like to use it more often, but in some cases starting it up is cumbersome.

My use case:

• I install an NPM package globally (npm i -g foo).
• I use it a bit and for some reason I want to start up a debug session to find what exactly happens when I execute foo --flag1 in the terminal.

As far as I know the only way to do that would be to create a launch configuration file, which would look like this:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Program",
            "program": "/whatever/foo.js",
            "args": ["--flag1"]
        }
    ]
}

I have some problems with this approach:

• I don't want to pollute every single project I want to debug with launch configuration files.
• I can already do node --inspect-brk /whatever/foo.js --flag1 and with the help of NiM I immediately get the devtools open, why isn't it as easy, or easier, to do the same with Code?
• Never mind if you also want to debug foo --flag2, go write another configuration for it.

Basically always requiring the creation of a launch configuration files leads to an awful user experience for me.

Proposed solution:

Node has the --inspect and --inspect-brk command line flags, I think similar flags should be added to Code itself. Code already comes with the --inspect-extensions and --inspect-brk-extensions flags, so the lack of those other flags seems like a major overlooking to me.

[isidorn]

/findDuplicates

[vscodebot]

Potential duplicates:

• Can't use "launch" setting in a language override (#42510)
• Auto attach debugger to Node processes started from integrated terminal (#42521)
• Suggestion: Start VSCode debugger from the command-line (#10979)
• Can not determine .cwd for user configs (#43591)
• JSON default snippets should respect indentation in file (#19508)

[isidorn]

Dup of #10979
Thanks bot!

[vscodebot]

Thanks for creating this issue! We figured it's covering the same as another one we already have. Thus, we closed this one as a duplicate. You can search for existing issues here. See also our issue reporting guidelines.

Happy Coding!