Compounds debugging in VS Code with delayed launch - debugging

Question

I'm trying to launch multiple programs that need to talk to each other in the debugger in VS Code and created a launch.json with a compound that launches each of the executables. The programs launch simultaneously and all try to connect to the host at the same time. Is there any way in VS Code to explicitly set some sort of time delay between launch of each of the executables, say 250ms or so?
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Host",
"type": "cppdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "/home/user/build/bin/host",
"args": [],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "/home/user/build/bin",
"environment": [],
"externalConsole": true,
"linux": {
"MIMode": "gdb",
"setupCommands": [
{
"description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
"text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
"ignoreFailures": true
}
]
}
},
{
"name": "Node A",
"type": "cppdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "/home/user/build/bin/Node_A",
"args": ["ArgA", "ArgB", "ArgC"],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "/home/user/build/bin",
"environment": [],
"externalConsole": true,
"linux": {
"MIMode": "gdb",
"setupCommands": [
{
"description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
"text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
"ignoreFailures": true
}
]
}
},
{
"name": "Node B",
"type": "cppdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "/home/user/build/bin/Node_B",
"args": ["ArgA", "ArgB", "ArgC"],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "/home/user/build/bin",
"environment": [],
"externalConsole": true,
"linux": {
"MIMode": "gdb",
"setupCommands": [
{
"description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
"text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
"ignoreFailures": true
}
]
}
}
],
"compounds": [
{
"name": "System",
"configurations": ["Host", "Node A", "Node B"]
}
]
}

Answer 1

Yes, you can add a prelaunch task which will sleep for x seconds.
So say you have a client and server on Node.js and the server db connection takes longer to load this causes problems with the client.
Delaying the client debugger on vscode would work like this on a Mac OS X
First create a task in the same folder as the launch.json file called tasks.json which will build out a shell command before launching the client.
{
// See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
// for the documentation about the tasks.json format
"version": "2.0.0",
"tasks": [
{
"label": "Sleepdelay",
"type": "shell",
"command": "sleep 6",
"windows": {
"command": "ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 > nul"
},
"group": "none",
"presentation": {
"reveal": "silent",
"panel": "new"
}
}
]
}
Add the following pretask to your launch.json file now to call the task
{
"configurations": [
{
"type": "chrome",
"request": "launch",
"name": "Client",
"url": "http://localhost:9090",
"webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}/client/src",
"breakOnLoad": true,
"sourceMapPathOverrides": {
"webpack:///./src/*": "${webRoot}/*"
},
"preLaunchTask": "Sleepdelay"
//"runtimeExecutable": "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
},
{
"type": "node",
"request": "launch",
"name": "Server",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/server/server.js",
"envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/server/.env",
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/server/"
}
],
"compounds": [
{
"name": "Server/Client",
"configurations": ["Server", "Client"]
}
]
}
The sleep command is available on Linux and MAC OS X. For Windows just use this hack in place of it:
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 > nul
Now you have a simple method to delay the launch of the client before the server.

Answer 2

Complementing Jason's answer
I was getting Error
OpenError: (:) [Out-File], NotSupportedException FileOpenFailure,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.OutFileCommand
On Windows (PowerShell Terminal), and have to change the ping hack command from:
"ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 > nul"
to:
"ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 > $null"