How to use NodeJS debugging in Visual Studio Code with asdf? (cannot find runtime 'node')

Question

Unfortunately Visual Studio Code doesn't find the runtime executable node.

But the integrated terminal knows about node:

$ which node
/home/user/.asdf/shims/node

How can I introduce node to Visual Studio Code without adding the runtime executable to the launch.json explicitly?

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "type": "node",
      "request": "launch",
      [...]
      "runtimeExecutable": "~/.asdf/shims/node" // <- want to avoid this
    }
  ]
}

Lorenza

I think this is what direnv tries to solve: github.com/asdf-community/asdf-direnv Did you figure it out? I'm contemplating switching to asdf from nvm and will encounter this, too, if I do. – Nomadize

@Nomadize Thank you for commenting. Indeed, that is maybe a very good solution. I need some time to look into that. – Lorenza

@Lorenza how did it go? I tried it, and it's nice and all, but still having the same issue – Aurar

@Aurar Eventually switched to devcontainers and stopped using asdf. – Lorenza

Answer 1

It seems VSCode first tries to resolve a Node binary before blindly executing it. In my case I didn't have a global Node version set, which causes that check to fail.

I simply set a global version, VSCode's checks pass, and then it runs the local version happily, without any ASDF-specific launch config.

Electoral

Answer 2

For me worked to set an asdf global version for node

asdf global nodejs 16.13.1

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