Configure the attach debug for Quarkus in Visual Studio Code

This blog post is a short cheat sheet for:

• How to simply organize workspaces and the debugging configuration separated from source code saved in GitHub.
• How to simply configure attach debug for Quarkus in Visual Studio Code

The advantage with that organization is:

You can easily delete the source code saved in GitHub from your local machine, but you don’t lose the debugging or other configurations you did.

In case that you will work again on the source code of the deleted GitHub project, you don’t need to setup these configurations again, because you can just add/link cloned GitHub source code project once more to your Visual Studio Code workspace project, which is still on your local machine.

Surely, an additional option is: You can save the “*.code-workspace” file, the “.vscode” folder, the “launch.json” and other configurations files in the same folder as your GitHub project. In this case you need to add these files and folders to the “.gitignore” file to prevent the upload into the GitHub project. But, I want to keep all my configurations and settings separated, just to ensure that I will keep all configurations for the projects, even when I deleted the GitHub project from my machine.

Step 1: Create a root folder for the Visual Studio Code  workspaces and configurations projects¶

Separate the Visual Studio Code configurations from the GitHub source code projects. So, we have a root folder for Visual Studio Code configuration and workspace files and one root folder for the GitHub projects.

Example names:

Step 2: Create a folder for a Visual Studio Code workspace project and add the GitHub project folders

In this example situation I used cns-workspace for the cloud native starter workspace project.

The two folder names vsc-workspaces/cns-workspace.

In the image you see two cloud native starter (cns) GitHub projects and the newly created workspace project.

Step 3: Save the workspace file¶

In this example situation I use cns-workspace project, where I save my configurations.
The workspace file name (cns-workspace.code-workspace) and the folders:

• vsc-workspaces/cns-workspace/cns-workspace.code-workspace

Step 4: Add debug configuration to the Visual Studio Code workspace¶

Ensure the extension pack “Java Extension Pack” is installed. That also includes following extensions and more:

• Debugger for Java
• Maven for Java

Add the debug configuration to the launch.json file.

In the following image you see folder structure used for that example.

Here is content of launch.json file.

• 5005 is the debug port for Quarkus
• 7777 is the debug port for OpenLiberty

{
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [     
        {
            "type": "java",
            "name": "Remote Debug (Attach Quarkus)",
            "request": "attach",
            "hostName": "localhost",
            "port": 5005
        },
        {
            "type": "java",
            "name": "Remote Debug (Attach OpenLiberty)",
            "request": "attach",
            "hostName": "localhost",
            "port": 7777
        },
        {
            "type": "java",
            "name": "Launch Current File",
            "request": "launch",
            "mainClass": "${file}"
        },
    ]
}

Step 5: Start your Quarkus application and debug¶

Ensure you have an active breakpoint in your source code.

The gif below shows following steps:

1. Start Quarkus in the development mode.
   With: mvn clean package quarkus:dev
2. Attach the debugger to port 5005
3. Change to the debug view in Visual Studio Code
4. Invoke a REST endpoint of the mircoservice
5. Debug the mircoservice running in Quarkus

I hope this was useful for you and let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

#quarkus, #visualstudiocode, #vscode, #java, #debug