Visual Studio Code Auto Attach debugging not working with NestJS

Bug Report

Reference: nestjs/nest#5590.

Current behavior

In a new nx project with nest preset, after setting a breakpoint somewhere and configuring Visual Studio Code’s Debug -> JavaScript -> Auto Attach Filter with several configurations, the application will not start and the breakpoint will not hit when running nx serve. It does not matter wether I enable or disable Debug -> JavaScript -> Use Preview.

Different values for the auto attach setting have the following results: always

smart

onlyWithFlag

disabled

Expected behavior

The application should start and breakpoints should break processing. This was working up until recently. I am not entirely sure, but I believe up until at least 1 month ago it was working fine.

Having a project with just NestJS does work with Visual Studio Code’s auto attach debugging.

Environment

Nest version: 7.4.4

 
For Tooling issues:
- Node version: 14.13.1
- Platform: Mac

Others:

    "@nrwl/cli": "10.3.1",
    "@nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx": "10.3.1",
    "@nrwl/jest": "10.3.1",
    "@nrwl/nest": "10.3.1",
    "@nrwl/node": "10.3.1",

[florianmrz]

I’m facing the same issue with @nrwl/node v11.0.2, however, I might’ve found some additional information.

It possibly has something to do with the inspect argument being passed down to the child process, see this StackOverflow question.

https://github.com/nrwl/nx/blob/075fe9446b16e4e5c8bba78e4cb85888e5e50fe9/packages/node/src/builders/execute/execute.impl.ts#L75-L77

Since the whole nx serve process was being debugged, setting the “inspect” option to false in workspace.json worked for me, as the spawned child process would still be able to break on any breakpoints:

# workspace.json        
"serve": {
  "builder": "@nrwl/node:execute",
  "options": {
    "buildTarget": "api:build",
    "inspect": false
  }
},

Afterwards, using both the JavaScript Debug Terminal as well as the Auto Attach Feature with the following patterns worked for me:

# VSCode Settings (JSON)
"debug.javascript.autoAttachFilter": "smart",
"debug.javascript.autoAttachSmartPattern": [
  "!**/{node_modules,npm-global,.yarn,.nvm}/**",
  "**/$KNOWN_TOOLS$/**",
  "'**/node_modules/@nrwl/node/**'"
],

[ethan-deng]

Just switch to “command prompt” to run the command will work. “powershell” won’t work.