C# Debugging

[Nightfall333]

When i try to run my code, it says that I need an extension. It then takes me to a list of extensions. I tried them all and none of them work.

[superman-lopez]

@Nightfall333 You have installed the "C# for Visual Studio Code" extension, and it's enabled?

[WardenGnaw]

The "Error "You don't have an extension of ..." with debugger extension" Dialog comes from VSCode.

Potentially a duplicate of microsoft/vscode#123881

[WardenGnaw]

Actually, still hitting this on 1.57.

VS Code Version

Version: 1.57.0 (user setup)
Commit: b4c1bd0a9b03c749ea011b06c6d2676c8091a70c
Date: 2021-06-09T17:18:42.354Z
Electron: 12.0.9
Chrome: 89.0.4389.128
Node.js: 14.16.0
V8: 8.9.255.25-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19043

@isidorn @weinand Is there something we are missing in our package.json?

Repro steps:

1. Install .NET 5
2. Run dotnet new console
3. Open VS Code in this folder
4. F5 the Program.cs file

Expected:
See configuration options

Actual:

Error:

Installed Extensions

Extension	Author (truncated)	Version
csharp	ms-	1.23.12
remote-wsl	ms-	0.56.5
cpptools	ms-	1.4.1
powershell	ms-	2021.5.1

Side note:
"Create launch.json" shows the debug configurations.

[isidorn]

@WardenGnaw sorry for the slow response I was on vacation the previous week.
Your extension needs to say that it is interested in the C# language in your package.json
Here's an example how mock debug is doing that https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-mock-debug/blob/main/package.json#L135

Can you please try that and let me know how it goes?
Thanks!

[WardenGnaw]

sorry for the slow response I was on vacation the previous week.

No worries! I hope you had a wonderful vacation!

---

Was there a change recently that required this? I thought the debugger language was covered by the breakpoints section of the package.json.

Can you please try that and let me know how it goes?

That resolved the prompt, thanks for the suggestion for a quick fix 😃

[isidorn]

The breakpoints section only controls if breakpoint can be set in a file or not. It is not even part of the debuggers contribution because we wanted to keep this separate.

We always had a debuggers.languages contribution and we treated it as a way for extension to notify VS Code that they are interested in a language. VS Code would use this knowledge when user tries to debug without a launch.json. For example if the user has a python file and presses F5 we would pick the Python debugger to start debugging and figure out what to do even though there is no launch.json.

Last milestone there was a change which broke C# - sorry about that! C# seems to have been using an approach that an F5 on a C# file would have to generate launch configs, even though C# never mentioned that it is interested in C# files.
This was working until last milestone, but we made our requirements stronger that in order to support debugging with no launch.json the debug extension now has to specify it supports a language.
This has improved the scenario where a user has no C# extension, the user has a .cs file and presses F5. Now we will prompt the user properly to install the C# extension. Which I think is a very nice flow for new users.

I hope this clarifies why we changed this.

[weinand]

@isidorn If a user has the C# extension installed, it does not make a lot of sense to show this dialog:

Yes, I understand that the missing "debuggers.languages" contribution prevents us from knowing whether one of the installed debugging extensions will work for C# files.

How can we fix this?
I see these options:

• since our change will break all debugging extensions that lack the "debuggers.languages" contribution, we will have to make sure that all debugger extensions add a proper "debuggers.languages" contribution before we can release the new feature. This means that we cannot ship the feature in this milestone.
• if we don't want to wait until all debuggers have been updated, we could either:
  • use the breakpoints contribution in a debugger's package.json as a strong indication for whether the debugger can handle the file type, or
  • show a debugger Quickpick to let the user select one of his debugger extensions, and only if there is none let the user search on the Marketplace.

[weinand]

I've created microsoft/vscode#126962 for discussing the general issue behind this.

[JoeRobich]

Closing as resolved.