How to Setup Visual Studio Code to Debug .NET Appications

The ability to find and fix bugs before releasing the software into production makes debugging one of the most crucial aspects of software development. Instead of using Console.WriteLine() statements at every intersection of your code, use VS Code’s many built-in functionalities, which include debugging tools to speed up and simplify the debugging process.

In this article, you will learn how to install the Microsoft C# extension, make debug configuration files, and set breakpoints in order to set up VS Code to debug C# and.NET Core applications.

Requirements

Before start, you need to install:

• ASP.NET Core SDK installed locally, which you can do by visiting the official .NET website.
• The latest version of VS Code installed on your system.
• C# extension by Microsoft installed

Microsoft’s C# extension offers strong yet portable development tools to enable cross-platform C# development in VS Code. Additionally, this extension offers wonderful features like:

• Support for C# editing, including Syntax Highlighting, IntelliSense, and numerous other features.
• Support for debugging .NET Core applications

1. Create a Simple C# Console Application

Let’s use the.NET CLI to create a straightforward C# console project using the dotnet new <TEMPLATE>command, where <TEMPLATE> is the application type, in order to avoid making the debugging process overly complicated.

Use the command dotnet new console --name <NAME> to create the C# console application. The <NAME> parameter specifies the name of the C# console project and the directory to be created. If the <NAME> parameter is omitted, the current directory name will be used by default.

dotnet new console --name SimpleConsoleProject && cd SimpleConsoleProject && code.

The aforementioned commands will launch the.NET project scaffolding tool, produce a basic Hello World starter console application, configure it, and launch the newly produced project in Visual Studio Code.

The C# extension will display a popup with the message Required assets to build and debug are missing from ‘SimpleConsoleProject’ as soon as Visual Studio Code has finished configuring the workspace environment. Add them in? – Click Yes to automatically generate and output the launch.json and tasks.json files into a .vscode folder.

Note: This is only possible if you have the C# extension by Microsoft installed.

When you open a C# file in VS Code, it will prompt you to install the C# extension if you don’t already have it.

2. Create C#’s Build and Debug Assets.

You can generate the build and debug files by clicking the Generate C# Assets for Build and Debug button on the debugger tab in VS Code’s left sidebar if you somehow missed the popup notification to do so.

The files required to build, debug, and launch the C# application will be generated when the button is clicked.

The tasks.json file contains the configurations for tasks (e.g. build, publish, watch, launch, etc) that are to be executed by VS Code.

The launch.json file contains the debugging configuration information.

Visual Studio Code can build and launch the project in debug mode thanks to these two files.

Now open the VS Code debugger panel and the launch.json file. To view the available tasks on the debugger panel, select the dropdown menu next to the play button.

.vscode/launch.json

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      // Use IntelliSense to find out which attributes exist for C# debugging
      // Use hover for the description of the existing attributes
      // For further information visit https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/blob/master/debugger-launchjson.md
      "name": ".NET Core Launch (console)",
      "type": "coreclr",
      "request": "launch",
      "preLaunchTask": "make this work",
      // If you have changed target frameworks, make sure to update the program path.
      "program": "${workspaceFolder}/bin/Debug/net6.0/SimpleConsoleProject.dll",
      "args": [],
      "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
      // For more information about the 'console' field, see https://aka.ms/VSCode-CS-LaunchJson-Console
      "console": "internalConsole",
      "stopAtEntry": false
    },
    {
      "name": ".NET Core Attach",
      "type": "coreclr",
      "request": "attach"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "build",
      "command": "dotnet",
      "type": "process",
      "args": [
        "build",
        "${workspaceFolder}/SimpleConsoleProject.csproj",
        "/property:GenerateFullPaths=true",
        "/consoleloggerparameters:NoSummary"
      ],
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
    },
    {
      "label": "publish",
      "command": "dotnet",
      "type": "process",
      "args": [
        "publish",
        "${workspaceFolder}/SimpleConsoleProject.csproj",
        "/property:GenerateFullPaths=true",
        "/consoleloggerparameters:NoSummary"
      ],
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
    },
    {
      "label": "watch",
      "command": "dotnet",
      "type": "process",
      "args": [
        "watch",
        "run",
        "--project",
        "${workspaceFolder}/SimpleConsoleProject.csproj"
      ],
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
    },
    {
      "label": "test",
      "command": "dotnet",
      "type": "process",
      "args": ["test", "${workspaceFolder}/SimpleConsoleProject.csproj"],
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
    },
    {
      "label": "make this work",
      "dependsOn": ["build", "test"],
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
    }
  ]
}

Yury Sobolev

Yury Sobolev is Full Stack Software Developer by passion and profession working on Microsoft ASP.NET Core. Also he has hands-on experience on working with Angular, Backbone, React, ASP.NET Core Web API, Restful Web Services, WCF, SQL Server.