misiur / vscode-firefox-debug

VS Code Debug Adapter for Firefox

VS Code Debug Adapter for Firefox

A Visual Studio Code extension to debug your web application or browser extension in Firefox.

Starting

You can use this extension in launch or attach mode.

In launch mode it will start an instance of Firefox navigated to the start page of your application and terminate it when you stop debugging. You can also set the reAttach option in your launch configuration to true, in this case Firefox won't be terminated at the end of your debugging session and the debugger will re-attach to it when you start the next debugging session - this is a lot faster than restarting Firefox every time. reAttach also works for add-on debugging: in this case, the add-on is (re-)installed as a temporary add-on.

In attach mode the extension attaches to a running instance of Firefox (which must be manually configured to allow remote debugging - see below).

To configure these modes you must create a file .vscode/launch.json in the root directory of your project. You can do so manually or let VS Code create an example configuration for you by clicking the gear icon at the top of the Debug pane. Finally, if .vscode/launch.json already exists in your project, you can open it and add a configuration snippet to it using the "Add Configuration" button in the lower right corner of the editor.

Launch

Here's an example configuration for launching Firefox navigated to the local file index.html in the root directory of your project:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Launch index.html",
            "type": "firefox",
            "request": "launch",
            "reAttach": true,
            "file": "${workspaceFolder}/index.html"
        }
    ]
}

You may want (or need) to debug your application running on a Webserver (especially if it interacts with server-side components like Webservices). In this case replace the file property in your launch configuration with a url and a webRoot property. These properties are used to map urls to local files:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Launch localhost",
            "type": "firefox",
            "request": "launch",
            "reAttach": true,
            "url": "http://localhost/index.html",
            "webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
        }
    ]
}

The url property may point to a file or a directory, if it points to a directory it must end with a trailing / (e.g. http://localhost/my-app/). You may omit the webRoot property if you specify the pathMappings manually. For example, the above configuration would be equivalent to

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Launch localhost",
            "type": "firefox",
            "request": "launch",
            "reAttach": true,
            "url": "http://localhost/index.html",
            "pathMappings": [{
                "url": "http://localhost",
                "path": "${workspaceFolder}"
            }]
        }
    ]
}

Setting the pathMappings manually becomes necessary if the url points to a file or resource in a subdirectory of your project, e.g. http://localhost/login/index.html.

Attach

To use attach mode, you have to launch Firefox manually from a terminal with remote debugging enabled. Note that you must first configure Firefox to allow remote debugging. To do this, open the Firefox configuration page by entering about:config in the address bar. Then set the following preferences:

Preference Name	Value	Comment
devtools.debugger.remote-enabled	true	Required
devtools.chrome.enabled	true	Required
devtools.debugger.workers	true	Required if you want to debug WebWorkers
devtools.debugger.prompt-connection	false	Recommended
devtools.debugger.force-local	false	Set this only if you want to attach VS Code to Firefox running on a different machine (using the host property in the attach configuration)

Then close Firefox and start it from a terminal like this:

Windows

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -start-debugger-server

OS X

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -start-debugger-server

Linux

firefox -start-debugger-server

Navigate to your web application and use this launch.json configuration to attach to Firefox:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Launch index.html",
            "type": "firefox",
            "request": "attach"
        }
    ]
}

If your application is running on a Webserver, you need to add the url and webRoot properties to the configuration (as in the second launch configuration example above).

Skipping ("blackboxing") files

You can tell the debugger to ignore certain files while debugging: When a file is ignored, the debugger won't break in that file and will skip it when you're stepping through your code. This is the same as "black boxing" scripts in the Firefox Developer Tools.

There are two ways to enable this feature:

• You can enable/disable this for single files while debugging by choosing "Toggle skipping this file" from the context menu of a frame in the call stack.
• You can use the skipFiles configuration property, which takes an array of glob patterns specifying the files to be ignored. If the URL of a file can't be mapped to a local file path, the URL will be matched against these glob patterns, otherwise the local file path will be matched. Examples for glob patterns:
  • "${workspaceFolder}/skipThis.js" - will skip the file skipThis.js in the root folder of your project
  • "**/skipThis.js" - will skip files called skipThis.js in any folder
  • "${workspaceFolder}/node_modules/**" - will skip all files under node_modules
  • "http?(s):/**" - will skip files that could not be mapped to local files
  • "**/google.com/**" - will skip files containing /google.com/ in their url, in particular all files from the domain google.com (that could not be mapped to local files)

Path mapping

The debug adapter needs to map the URLs of javascript files (as seen by Firefox) to local file paths (as seen by VS Code). It creates a set of default path mappings from the configuration that work for most projects. However, depending on the setup of your project, they may not work for you, resulting in breakpoints being shown in gray (and Firefox not breaking on them) even after Firefox has loaded the corresponding file. In this case, you will have to define them manually using the pathMappings configuration property. The easiest way to do this is through the Loaded Scripts Explorer shown in the side bar of VS Code while debugging. By choosing "Map to local directory" from the context menu of a folder, you can pick the corresponding local directory and a path mapping will automatically be added to your configuration. After this, you have to restart the debugging session in order for the path mapping to come into effect. If you specify more than one mapping, the first mappings in the list will take precedence over subsequent ones and all of them will take precedence over the default mappings.

The most common source of path mapping problems is webpack because the URLs that it generates depend on its configuration and different URL styles are in use. If your configuration contains a webroot property, the following mappings will be added by default in order to support most webpack setups:

{ "url": "webpack:///~/", "path": "${webRoot}/node_modules/" }
{ "url": "webpack:///./~/", "path": "${webRoot}/node_modules/" }
{ "url": "webpack:///./", "path": "${webRoot}/" }
{ "url": "webpack:///src/", "path": "${webRoot}/src/" }
{ "url": "webpack:///", "path": "" }

In order to track down path mapping problems, you can use the PathConversion logger (see the Diagnostic logging section below) to see all mappings that are in effect, how URLs are mapped to paths and which URLs couldn't be mapped.

You can also set the path argument of a mapping to null to prevent some URLs from being mapped to local files. This can be useful for URLs that generate their content on the server (e.g. PHP scripts) or if the content on the server is different from the local file content. For these URLs the debugger will show the content fetched from the server instead of the local file content.

Debugging Firefox add-ons

If you want to debug a Firefox add-on, you have to install the developer edition of Firefox. In launch mode, it will automatically be used if it is installed in the default location. If your add-on is developed with the add-on SDK, you also have to ensure that the jpm command is in the system path.

Here's an example configuration for add-on debugging:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Launch addon",
            "type": "firefox",
            "request": "launch",
            "reAttach": true,
            "addonType": "webExtension",
            "addonPath": "${workspaceFolder}"
        }
    ]
}

The addonType property can be set to webExtension (the default), addonSdk or legacy, depending on the type of your add-on. The addonPath must be the absolute path to the directory containing the add-on manifest (manifest.json for webExtension add-ons, package.json for addonSdk add-ons or install.rdf for legacy add-ons).

You can reload your add-on using the command "Firefox: Reload add-on" (extension.firefox.reloadAddon) from the VS Code command palette. If you're using the add-on SDK, you can also use the command "Firefox: Rebuild and reload add-on" (extension.firefox.rebuildAndReloadAddon) if you made changes that influence the install.rdf file generated by jpm. The add-on will also be reloaded when you restart the debugging session, unless you have set reloadOnAttach to false. You can also use the reloadOnChange property to let VS Code reload your add-on automatically whenever you change a file.

Further optional configuration properties

• reAttach: If you set this option to true in a launch configuration, Firefox won't be terminated at the end of your debugging session and the debugger will re-attach to it at the start of your next debugging session. If you're debugging an add-on developed with the add-on SDK, messages sent to the javascript console won't be shown in the VS Code debug console in reAttach mode.

• reloadOnAttach: This flag controls whether the web page(s) should be automatically reloaded after attaching to Firefox. The default is to reload in a launch configuration with the reAttach flag set to true and to not reload in an attach configuration.

• reloadOnChange: Automatically reload the Firefox tabs or your add-on whenever files change. You can specify single files, directories or glob patterns to watch for file changes and additionally specify files to be ignored. Since watching files consumes system resources, make sure that you are not watching more files than necessary. The following example will watch all javascript files in your workspace except those under node_modules:

    "reloadOnChange": {
        "watch": [ "${workspaceFolder}/**/*.js" ],
        "ignore": [ "${workspaceFolder}/node_modules/**" ]
    }
  

  By default, the reloading will be "debounced": the debug adapter will wait until the last file change was 100 milliseconds ago before reloading. This is useful if your project uses a build system that generates multiple files - without debouncing, each file would trigger a separate reload. You can use reloadOnChange.debounce to change the debounce time span or to disable debouncing (by setting it to 0 or false).

  Instead of string arrays, you can also use a single string for watch and ignore and if you don't need to specify ignore or debounce, you can specify the watch value directly, e.g.

  "reloadOnChange": "${workspaceFolder}/lib/*.js"
  

• profileDir, profile: You can specify a Firefox profile directory or the name of a profile created with the Firefox profile manager. The extension will create a copy of this profile in the system's temporary directory and modify the settings in this copy to allow remote debugging.

• keepProfileChanges: Use the specified profile directly instead of creating a temporary copy. Since this profile will be permanently modified for debugging, you should only use this option with a dedicated debugging profile.

• port: Firefox uses port 6000 for the debugger protocol by default. If you want to use a different port, you can set it with this property.

• firefoxExecutable: The absolute path to the Firefox executable (launch configuration only). If not specified, this extension will use the default Firefox installation path. It will look for both regular and developer editions of Firefox; if both are available, it will use the developer edition.

• firefoxArgs: An array of additional arguments used when launching Firefox (launch configuration only)

• host: If you want to debug with Firefox running on different machine, you can specify the device's address using this property (attach configuration only).

• log: Configures diagnostic logging for this extension. This may be useful for troubleshooting (see below for examples).

• showConsoleCallLocation: Set this option to true to append the source location of console calls to their output

• preferences: Set additional Firefox preferences in the debugging profile

• installAddonInProfile: Install the add-on by building an xpi file and placing it in the temporary profile that is created for the debugging session. This installation method is incompatible with the reAttach option and won't allow reloading the add-on while debugging, but it is necessary for debugging XUL overlays. By default, it is only used if reAttach isn't set to true.

• sourceMaps: The Firefox developers are moving the handling of source-maps to the client side of the debugging protocol. You can test the new source-mapping code by setting this property to client. Note that this is still experimental and there is a known issue when debugging minified code (see this bug report).

Diagnostic logging

The following example for the log property will write all log messages to the file log.txt in your workspace:

...
    "log": {
        "fileName": "${workspaceFolder}/log.txt",
        "fileLevel": {
            "default": "Debug"
        }
    }
...

This example will write all messages about conversions from URLs to paths and all error messages to the VS Code console:

...
    "log": {
        "consoleLevel": {
            "PathConversion": "Debug",
            "default": "Error"
        }
    }
...

Troubleshooting

• Breakpoints that should get hit immediately after the javascript file is loaded may not work the first time: You will have to click "Reload" in Firefox for the debugger to stop at such a breakpoint. This is a weakness of the Firefox debug protocol: VS Code can't tell Firefox about breakpoints in a file before the execution of that file starts.
• If your breakpoints remain unverified after launching the debugger (i.e. they appear gray instead of red), the conversion between file paths and urls may not work. The messages from the PathConversion logger may contain clues how to fix your configuration. Have a look at the "Diagnostic Logging" section for an example how to enable this logger.
• If you think you've found a bug in this adapter please file a bug report. It may be helpful if you create a log file (as described in the "Diagnostic Logging" section) and attach it to the bug report.