Run normally without debug

[TheColorRed]

Is there a command that will run my file without opening the debug console and without opening the debug tab?

[weinand]

@TheColorRed no there is no run command, but I think it is a valid feature request.

@isidorn what do you think?

[isidorn]

@weinand I agree it is a valid feature request. Not sure how to best handle this, adding a 'silent' option in the launch.config?

[egamma]

Could this be covered by a new run action that consumes the information in the existing launch config but doesn't do any debugger attachment logic.

[isidorn]

By debugger attachment logic you mean open the debug console and open the debug viewlet?
Yes it could be covered by a new action. Would we just call it run, or debug: run. If we just call it run it would not be clear that it actually reads the launch.json for the program file and so on..

[weinand]

@egamma sure, but it has to go through the debug adapter (DA) because VS Code doesn't know anything about how to launch a program or that an 'debugger attachment logic' even exists. And the launch/attach config attributes are not part of the debug protocol but are contributed by a debug extension, so VS Code cannot know how to use them in order to 'run' a program.

It is probably a new built-in launch config attribute noDebug. This will trigger VS Code not to start a debug session and prevent the 'debugger attachment' logic in the DA. Some of the other attributes still make sense (e.g. args, runtimeArgs, cwd, externalConsole) but it the responsibity of the DA to decide what to do with them.

Another interesting question is whether VS Code tracks programs started this way. If there is no debug session, there will be no 'Terminate' button. This requires some new terminate UI if the program is run in the internal debug console.

[egamma]

@weinand makes sense, but from a user perspective I would not want to have to edit the launch config when I want to switch from running under the debugger and running without the debugger.

My thinking was that the Run actions passes the noDebug attribute to the DA.

[weinand]

@egamma yes, I was assuming that... Sorry for not making this clear.

[weinand]

@felixfbecker thanks for your great suggestions in #3209

(and sorry that I had to make your newer issue a duplicate of this older one...)

[felixfbecker]

@weinand my bad for not searching enough first ;)

[felixfbecker]

Gonna repost what I said:

In Visual Studio, you can press Ctrl+F5 to launch the application without a debugger attached, which i befinicial for performance reasons. For VS Code this would be very helpful, because you don't always want to actually debug a file or actually cannot because there is no debug adapter extension out there yet. Currently, you have to define a "launch" task, which cannot get a keyboard shortcut. Having "Launch without debugging" would be much more semantically correct.

• Introduce a new action in command palette "Launch without debuggin" with keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F5
• If the currently selected configuration has type set, send the debug adapter a launchRequest with the additional argument debug: false runRequest
• Make the debug setting type optional. If a configuration does not have a type, it can only be launched without debugging:
  • If runtimeExecutable is set, spawn the runtime executable (java, bash, ...) with the runtimeArguments, program and args.
    Otherwise spawn program with args directly (like a .exe or .bat)
  • program should be allowed to drop the file extension (java needs this for example)
  • Put stdout on the debug console and send input on the debug console to stdin
  • If externalConsole is true, run the script in an external console
  • Support preLaunchTask

Examples:

{
  "name": "Run currently open script",
  "runtimeExecutable": "bash",
  "program": "${file}"
}

{
  "name": "Launch",
  "runtimeExecutable": "java",
  "program": "${workspaceRoot}/MyClass",
  "preLaunchTask": "compile"
}

However, I also prefer the idea of having a runRequest instead of my initial idea with launchRequest with debug: false, because adapters that do not implement this simply error instead of behaving unexpectedly.