Integrate the debugger and add remote debugging support

[pushkar-g]

Integrate the debugger - Currently the debugger utilizes the V8 debugger plugin. We can integrate the debugger in our code itself and the breakpoints can be activated within the same tab instead of creating a new tab.

More details - http://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html

We can also add remote debug support as part of this enhancement.

[paulvi]

This is great idea!

However link provided is for node command client or REPL mode, that is not aplicable.

This is related to #3 and #12

[paulvi]

Remote debugging should be separate issues, as actually Chromium Remote Debugger can connect to any Node.js app start with -debug[=port] option. If interested, try to play with V8LaunchConfigurations. Likely no programming needed at all.

Quote from http://nodejs.org/api/debugger.html#debugger_advanced_usage

The V8 debugger can be enabled and accessed either by starting Node with the --debug command-line flag or by signaling an existing Node process with SIGUSR1.

That mean that it is possible to start debugging already running app.

[RaymondQiu]

I am trying to use Nodeclipse on my computer to debug a node.js app running on a sever (another machine). I have played around with the current V8 launch configuration but got no luck. Any one know how to do that?

[ghost]

The answer was too long for a simple comment here therefore I wrote a full post to explain how I am doing it — see: http://nodeleaf.net/editing-remote-projects-with-nodeclipse/

[RaymondQiu]

Thanks for the reply. But that is a little bit different than what I want to do. I want to run an node.js app on the server by calling "node --debug Helloworld". Then, on my desktop, I want to use the V8 engine to debug it. Since the V8 engine only look the 127.0.0.1 address, I can not attach the debugger to the remote server. I also read some articles about creating a SSH tunnel to do that but no success so far. :-(

[RaymondQiu]

Today, I tried to set up SSH tunnel. I forwarded both 3000 and 5858 ports. On my machine, I could use the localhost:3000 to view the app's web pate. However, when I launch V8 to localhost:5858, it gave me an error saying "Failed to get version". Any idea what could cause this?

[ghost]

I don't think you need SSH tunneling to access localhost:3000 - assuming your nodejs app is an HTTP server listening on localhost port 3000. Could you expose how the ssh tunnel on port 5858 was setup?

[ghost]

This new post is exposing how I debug nodejs application remotely: http://nodeleaf.net/how-to-debug-a-nodejs-application-remotely/

[RaymondQiu]

Thanks for the reply. I will try the solution in the new post.As for your question, I used Putty to forwarded both 3000 and 5858 ports from my machine to the remote server. I used localhost:3000 to access the app running on the server which meant the SSH tunnel was established (before I created the SSH tunnel, I could not visit the app through localhost:3000).

[RaymondQiu]

I just went through the post. The solution is using Chrome (webkits debug engine) to debug which we tried already. We still prefer to use nodeclipse as a one stop IDE to do the debug. Is there any way to do that? :-)

[ghost]

None that I am aware of but it's never too late to learn. On a principle I do aggree with that you it would be much better to debug from IDE. Pratically I don't think the current Nodeclipse can really handle this but I'll be glad to be corrected if I was wrong as this is a most sensible issue indeed.

[ghost]

I still don't get how you are setting your SSH tunnel. The last time I had to do this to debug a web app remotely was in 2010. So I don't remember the specifics precisely but in the principle I had to forward the debugger port on the remote server to the local machine - doing something like this:

# ssh -R 10137:127.0.0.1:10137 user@domain.name

At the time I was using another avatar of Eclipse (Zend Studio) as it was a PHP application and 10137 was the port for Zend Debuger: a different situation but possibly a similar solution for a different port?