adding support for a custom node path or setting version with NVM

[oriSomething]

adding support for a custom node path or setting version with NVM. currently it only works with default alias of NVM. since the workspace i'm using it would be a hassle every time to change the default alias of NVM for every project.

• VSCode Version:
  1.0.0
• OS Version:
  OS X 10.10.5

[dbaeumer]

@oriSomething can you please describe the use case? Doyou need this for debugging ?

[oriSomething]

yes.
i'm trying to debug... but then i get the wrong node version. because in my computer i need by default to use older version (v0.12.x) of node (need of most of the projects), and this specific project depends on capabilities of node >= v4.
in the debugger i see messages of version 0.12.13 while i need it to be version 4. the only option i have is to change in NVM to default "alias" of the version i need for VSCode.
because i cannot bump the node version to the whole of the other projects, and sometimes i need to work at both at them at once it makes this process frustrate.

[weinand]

@oriSomething you can set the "runtimeExecutable" of your launch config to the desired node.js version.

[jefffriesen]

I don't know if this is a question or feature request. To get the node version when we use nvm I use in the terminal:

which node

The output I can paste in runtimeExecutable property of launch.json. I want to do something like this in launch.json:

"runtimeExecutable": "${`which node`}"

So it picks up which version of node I'm using. But that doesn't work when trying to debug.

Attribute 'runtimeExecutable' is not absolute ('${which node}'); consider adding '${workspaceRoot}/' as a prefix to make it absolute.

Can I make this work? Also, wouldn't that be a sane default?

[weinand]

@jefffriesen variable substitution for ${...} in launch.json attributes does not use a shell. So the shell syntax 'which node' does not work at all. VS Code sees it as a variable with name 'which node'.

But I do not see a reason why you want to use "runtimeExecutable": "${'which node'}" at all.

which node just returns the node that is available through your PATH. If you do not specify "runtimeExecutable", VS Code will just use the 'node' that is available through the PATH which is by definition identical to what you want to achieve.

In the September release you will be able to use "runtimeExecutable": "node" so we will lift the requirement to use an absolute path.

[jefffriesen]

@weinand I see what you're saying. When I first tried the debugger using nvm to set the node version, I got an error about node not being found (I didn't copy the error). I took what I got from which node in the terminal and added it to runtimeExecutable inside launch.json, which worked. That's why I tried to use the terminal command which node in runtimeExecutable. Now after your message I deleted the path in runtimeExecutable, restarted vscode and the debugger still works.

So I don't know what happened and can't repeat it. Thanks.

[weinand]

@jefffriesen in previous releases VS Code had a bug that would prevent the PATH environment variable from being correctly propagated to the place where we called "node". In this case node was not found and a workaround was to set runtimeExecutable to the absolute path of node. Since this problem has been fixed, setting runtimeExecutable is no longer necessary.

[jefffriesen]

Ok, good to know.

I don't know why I got that error. It was the first time running the debugger. It's possible that I hadn't set nvm yet in the terminal, so no Node version was found. But that's usually the first thing I do when opening a terminal. Either way, I'm good. Thanks

[seanfisher]

I used a workaround listed in #1895 to have VS Code use the NVM managed version of node in the .nvmrc file. I wrote up the details @ NVM and VS Code if you're interested.

[oriSomething]

@seanfisher I'll read about it. Thanks!

[z-vr]

borrowing @seanfisher's method, it's

node.sh

#!/bin/bash

[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm

nvm run $*

.nvmrc

4

launch.json

        {
            "type": "node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch program",
            "program": "${workspaceRoot}/index",
            "runtimeExecutable": "${workspaceRoot}/node.sh",
            "protocol": "legacy"
        },

this is enough (if NVM_DIR is exported, which it should be). make sure to specify legacy protocol for Node 4.