CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsdebuggingvisual-studio-codewindows-subsystem-for-linux
codekoriko
codekoriko

Reputation: 870

Node.js debug on VScode Remote WSL, VSC won't find the node binary

I installed nodejs on wsl following this steps:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/javascript/nodejs-on-wsl

Then debugging a helloworld example as shown here: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/nodejs/nodejs-tutorial#_debugging-your-node-application

So I'm simply having in file helloworld.js at the root of the vscode workspace dir containing:

var msg = 'Hello World';
console.log(msg);

with a breaking point on console.log

Then on debug tab I click "create a launch.json file" which give me the default config:

        {
            "type": "pwa-node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Program",
            "skipFiles": [
                "<node_internals>/**"
            ],
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/helloworld.js"
        }

But when I press F5 the activity bar debug button makes a *blip* but nothing happens and no error message on any tab appears (integrated terminal, debug console, problems, output)

It's only when I specify to vscode where to get the node binary path by adding to the config:

"runtimeExecutable": "/home/user01/.nvm/versions/node/v14.18.0/bin/node"

Then I get my code running and my breakpoint honored.

I thought it might be a problem of vscode not being able to find the path in a non-interactive shell so I tried as found here create a /etc/profile.d/nvm-autoload.sh with the following:

# Enable nvm if available
if [ -f ~/.nvm/nvm.sh ]; then
  source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
fi

But still not...

And the runtimeExecutable fix creates complications if I want to debug typescript files as it requires tsc: build as a preLaunchTask

I could run my typescript debugger along a tsc -w and getting ride of the preLaunchTask but I feel something is wrong somewhere and that's bugging me...

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3394

Answers (2)

Jeremy Charron
Jeremy Charron

Reputation: 1

I had a similar issue and fixed it by installing the WSL extension in VSCode.

Then, restart VSCode by running the following command at your project root in a WSL Terminal :

code .

Node debugging should work properly.

Upvotes: 0

codekoriko
codekoriko

Reputation: 870

The issue was due to the fact that I was starting Vscode from Windows start menu which don't set the environment variable properly.

To make it work I have to start vscode from wsl terminal.

cd ~/my/project
# if needed
nvm use
code .

then launch.json mentionned above works

Upvotes: 9

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