Reputation: 921

Debugging current file in VS Code

I am writing javascript and am currently doing simple exercises/programs. At times, I wish to run my file for testing purposes. I am aware I could create an HTML file and do this within the console. In Sublime, there exists a way to "build" the current file and immediately see the results (say, whatever is sent to console.log).

With VS Code, it seems that for every file I want to "build"/debug in this manner, I must manually change the launch.json file to reflect the name of the current program.

I have been researching a way around this, and I learned that there are variables like ${file} , but when I use that in the launch.json "program" attribute, for example:

"program": "${workspaceRoot}/${file}"

with or without the workspaceRoot part, I get the following error:

Attribute "program" does not exist" (file name here).

Am I missing a simple way to accomplish this, or must I keep editing launch.json every time I want to run the file?

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 92

Answers (4)

KyleMit

Reputation: 29909

There are many different ways you may need to access a file that are provided by Predefined variables:

Supposing that you have the following requirements:

A file located at /home/your-username/your-project/folder/file.ext opened in your editor;

The directory /home/your-username/your-project opened as your root workspace.

So you will have the following values for each variable:

${userHome} - /home/your-username

${workspaceFolder} - /home/your-username/your-project

${workspaceFolderBasename} - your-project

${file} - /home/your-username/your-project/folder/file.ext

${fileWorkspaceFolder} - /home/your-username/your-project

${relativeFile} - folder/file.ext

${relativeFileDirname} - folder

${fileBasename} - file.ext

${fileBasenameNoExtension} - file

${fileDirname} - /home/your-username/your-project/folder

${fileExtname} - .ext

${lineNumber} - line number of the cursor

${selectedText} - text selected in your code editor

${execPath} - location of Code.exe

${pathSeparator} - / on macOS or linux, \ on Windows

Upvotes: 13

Ricardo Mayerhofer

Reputation: 2309

For reference this is the full launch.json

{
  "launch": {
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
      {
        "name": "Node.js - Debug Current File",
        "type": "node",
        "request": "launch",
        "program": "${file}"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Upvotes: 77