debugging-with-vscode.md

Debugging tests with Visual Studio Code

Translations: Français

Setup

In the sidebar click the Debug handle.

Add a new configuration in the dropdown menu next to the green Debug button: Add configuration. This will open launch.json with all debug configurations.

Add following to the configurations object:

{
	"type": "node",
	"request": "launch",
	"name": "Run AVA test",
	"program": "${workspaceFolder}/node_modules/ava/profile.js",
	"args": [
	  "${file}"
	],
	"skipFiles": [
		"<node_internals>/**/*.js"
	]
}

Save this configuration after you added it.

Debug

Note: The file you want to debug, must be open and active

Note: The breakpoints in VSCode are a bit buggy sometimes (especially with async code). debugger; always works fine.

Set breakpoints in the code or write debugger; at the point where it should stop.

Hit the green Debug button next to the list of configurations on the top left in the Debug view. Once the breakpoint is hit, you can evaluate variables and step through the code.

Serial debugging

By default AVA runs tests concurrently. This may complicate debugging. Add a configuration with the --serial argument so AVA runs only one test at a time:

{
	"type": "node",
	"request": "launch",
	"name": "Run AVA test serially",
	"program": "${workspaceFolder}/node_modules/ava/profile.js",
	"args": [
	  "${file}",
	  "--serial"
	],
	"skipFiles": [
		"<node_internals>/**/*.js"
	]
}

Note that, if your tests aren't properly isolated, certain test failures may not appear when running the tests serially.