Cake Debugging with VS Code

by Alistair Chapman(@agc93)

This recipe shows how to debug Cake scripts from within VS Code.

Prerequisites

This guide will use the Cake example project as a sample, but you should be able to use these steps with any Cake build script.

Make sure you have the following already in place:

• The latest version of the C# for Visual Studio Code extension installed in VS Code.

• Also make sure you have the latest version of the Cake for Visual Studio Code extension installed.

Getting Started

• Open your workspace, then open the Command Palette (Ctrl-Shift-P by default) and find the Cake: Install debug dependencies command. Run the command, and after a few seconds you should receive a notification that dependencies have been enabled.

• If you now open the Debug panel in the Activity Bar and press the Gear icon to configure a new launch.json, you should see entries for Cake.

• Selecting Cake CoreCLR will add the following to your launch.json:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Cake: Debug Script (CoreCLR)",
            "type": "coreclr",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${workspaceRoot}/tools/Cake.CoreCLR/Cake.dll",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceRoot}/build.cake",
                "--debug",
                "--verbosity=diagnostic"
            ],
            "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
            "stopAtEntry": true,
            "externalConsole": false
        }
    ]
}

This configuration will launch Cake.CoreCLR using the default build.cake file in the workspace root with diagnostic verbosity and debugging enabled. If you want to debug a different script file, change the ${workspaceRoot}/build.cake line to the location of your file.

• You can now set breakpoints on any line in your Cake file using the left margin or the F9 key.

• Finally, run the new debug configuration using from the Debug panel using either the green arrow or the F5 key.

• VS Code will stop on the breakpoint you set and you should have access to all the usual features of C# debugging including variables and watches, and you can even hover over symbols for real-time debugging.

You can also quickly run or debug individual tasks using the run task and debug task shortcuts above each Task!