[SOLVED] Attach visual studio debugger to electron app

Attach visual studio debugger to electron app

I'm attempting to debug electron app from visual studio 2017 (and not vscode) from scratch.

I created a console nodejs project, install and save electron. Project structure:

Content of app.js (taken from website of electron):

'use strict';

const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
const path = require('path')
const url = require('url')

// Keep a global reference of the window object, if you don't, the window will
// be closed automatically when the JavaScript object is garbage collected.
let win

function createWindow() {
    // Create the browser window.
    win = new BrowserWindow({ width: 800, height: 600 })

    // and load the index.html of the app.
    win.loadURL(url.format({
        pathname: path.join(__dirname, 'index.html'),
        protocol: 'file:',
        slashes: true
    }))

    // Open the DevTools.
    win.webContents.openDevTools()

    // Emitted when the window is closed.
    win.on('closed', () => {
        // Dereference the window object, usually you would store windows
        // in an array if your app supports multi windows, this is the time
        // when you should delete the corresponding element.
        win = null
    })
}

// This method will be called when Electron has finished
// initialization and is ready to create browser windows.
// Some APIs can only be used after this event occurs.
app.on('ready', createWindow)

// Quit when all windows are closed.
app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
    // On macOS it is common for applications and their menu bar
    // to stay active until the user quits explicitly with Cmd + Q
    if (process.platform !== 'darwin') {
        app.quit()
    }
})

app.on('activate', () => {
    // On macOS it's common to re-create a window in the app when the
    // dock icon is clicked and there are no other windows open.
    if (win === null) {
        createWindow()
    }
})

// In this file you can include the rest of your app's specific main process
// code. You can also put them in separate files and require them here.

And index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Hello World!</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Hello World!</h1>
    We are using node
    <script>document.write(process.versions.node)</script>,
    Chrome
    <script>document.write(process.versions.chrome)</script>,
    and Electron
    <script>document.write(process.versions.electron)</script>.
</body>
</html>

However, when I click start, the electron app starts, but the debugging process seems to detach itself. When I try to manually attach the debugger to all electron process (Debug -> Attach to process -> choose all electron processes), the break point claims not to be hit since no symbols are loaded.

This is the project property page:

Is there a step that I missed? Since debugging can be done on VSCode, I assume it can also be done in VS2017?

Many thanks.

NOTE: I did check Suppress JIT optimization and uncheck Enable just my code.

Solution

This is actually very easy to do.

Configure your app in Visual Studio like this:

Start your app. Electron will start on a separate terminal but Visual Studio won't be attached to it.

Go to Debug > Attach to process... and enter the Webkit websocket connection type and http://127.0.0.1:5858 as the target.
Your breakpoints are now enabled.