I am working on a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro (10.0.18362) and trying to get Visual Studio 2019 setup and configured for .NET Core 3.1 Web Development but am running into several issues.
I created a default React.js ASP.NET Core Web Application and ran the project. Things seemed to be working alright, except that after updating JavaScript code the browser updates after a fairly long pause; things seem to be lagging.
After closing Visual Studio 2019 from the default Web App (no updates) there are several processes that seem to hang, and have to be shut down manually:
I have tried installing Visual Studio 2019 with the Node.js provided by the Visual Studio Installer, in addition to installing Node.js V12.4 and V13.6 manually with the same results.
Another problem: If I update the project from JavaScript to TypeScript using npx create-react-app client-app --typescript, Hot Updates stop working entirely. But after updating the JavaScript code and refreshing the browser things seem to update, so it does seem to be recompiling. I have tried debugging in Firefox and Chrome, both with the same results.
I am very hesitant to continue working with this install as I have had several issues when these processes. If these hang unexpectedly and are not shut down they will continue to use the old versions of the code and nothing that is done will update until the processes are shut down, causing complete insanity.
Could there a specific install procedure I need to perform as a workaround? Or am I possibly missing NuGet packages or Add-Ons? Since this is a fresh install of the operating system, are there Windows Features that I need to install? Or other configuration/permission changes that could be causing this?
Prior to this install, only projects created in Visual Studio 2017 seemed to work as expected. But I need to develop this site in .NET Core 3.0 and it looks like only Visual Studio 2019 is supported for that.
Update
After some messing around, it looks like Node is causing the problems. If I manually shut down the Node processes, then Visual Studio will finally shut down—but it leaves other processes like the VSCompiler and Consoles running. This happens even if I run Visual Studio as an administrator.
Should I install node before Visual Studio, or visa versa? Is there possibly some setup that I need to perform with Visual Studio or Node to get things working correctly?
Update 2
After not finding any fix I tried a complete reinstall of Windows, including a disk format, and then only installed Visual Studio and Node.js.
One interesting thing I found when doing this: I originally only installed Visual Studio and selected both the "Web Development" and "NodeJS Development". But when I tried to run a new .NET Core Web Application without any changes, I received an error saying that Node.js was not installed—even though I was able to find a node.exe in the MsBuilds folder under Visual Studio.
I completely uninstalled Visual Studio and all other components, installed Node.js, and then Visual Studio, but the problem still persists. Any time I try to run any kind of JavaScript using the SPA Templates, the Node.js processes don't shut down. If I kill the Node.js process then Visual Studio will finally shutdown, but it leaves the Console Window Host and VBCSCompiler running which have to be shut down manually.
I also tried creating a new .NET Core Web Application, except this time selecting the Angular Template and it works better: The Hot Reload works and it seems to run much faster. But the processes still don't shut down. The only difference is killing the Node.js processes doesn't let Visual Studio shutdown.
Update 3
Also not sure if this helps, but I tried setting the node.exe properties to "Run this program as an Administrator" to see if it happen to be a permission issue. This yielded the same results. I noticed that two windows will pop up, however: First a blank one, then the actual Angular server window.
I'm not sure if it's related, but when I tried to run the Angular Application again it looks like Angular is pointing at another (random) port than is set in the debug settings in the project.
One thing I did notice is that the usual Server Messages are not showing in the Output Window. It used to display the node.js messages such as "the server is running" and other compiler messages, but now it only displays the .NET output.
Update 4
Getting closer, I uninstalled Visual Studio and Node.js, then made sure to clean out any left over Visual Studio and node_modules folders from my AppData and User/Local directories, and then did a disk cleanup. Finally, I reinstalled Visual Studio—making sure to run the installer as Admin—and reinstalled Node.js.
I ran Visual Studio as an admin and created a new Angular App. Now, the Angular app works as expected, HMR works and things seem to run smoothly except that the processes still hang. The major difference is that killing the Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 process kills everything, whereas before it was leaving the VBSCCompiler, Node.js and consoles running.
When creating a React App things load fine. But, again, the HMR doesn't work and also leaves processes running. shutting down the main Visual Studio process seems to clean these up now too.
I'm afraid I don't have a fix but if anyone wants a quick way to kill all the errant node processes and speed things back up they can run:
taskkill /IM "node.exe" /F
I haven't had any issues executing this while VS is running.
In Visual Studio 2019, go to Tools, Options, Debugging, General and towards the bottom there is a checkbox for Automatically close the console when debugging stops. It is unchecked by default on new versions of VS and if you look at your ASP.NET Core project properties you will see that it is a console project. So without the checkbox checked, the console does not automatically close.
The problem is that it is a hidden console so you can't see it to shut it down manually. If you check the box for closing the console automatically, then the consoles and node.js will stop running whenever you stop the debugger. Also in Options, there is a Node.Js Tools area that you may want to look at as well. It has a checkbox for Wait for input when process exits abnormally. If the console is hidden, there is no way for you to do input so that could hold the process open as well.
Another option, if you don't want to change any of the debugging options, is to go to your project properties > Debug and change the Launch settings for the IIS Express profile to Project instead of IIS Express. This will actually make the console / command prompt visible and when you are done debugging you can Ctrl-C to stop the debugger or when you hit stop the console will give you the message to Press any key to close this window . . .
I had the same issue with React SPA, this worked for me:
Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> General -> Enable JavaScript debugging for ASP.NET (Chrome, Edge and IE) (Visual Studio 2017 and 2019) <- unchecked
also the dropdown next to the play button:
Script Debugging -> disabled
There are possibilities to run pre and post build tasks in Visual Studio. I would look for them in project settings.
I use VSCode. So, if you follow the explanation below you'll be able to tackle the problem.
Create a .bat file in your project root folder (for instance kill-node.bat) with the followwing content:
tasklist | find /i "node.exe" && taskkill /im node.exe /F || echo process "node.exe" not running.
Add a pre-build-task executing the .bat file
Add a post-build-task executing the .bat file
Done! Now every single time you start debugging/redebugging your app, the .bat file kills all node-zombie instances. And ditto for your stopping dubug moment.
The VSCode guide:
Perform step 1 of the algorithm above.
Open the file tasks.json in .vscode folder and prepend at top of its tasks the new one:
{
"label": "kill-node",
"command": "kill-node.bat"
},
Now alter the build task code (to activate our kill-node task at the pre-build time):
{
"label": "build",
"dependsOn": "kill-node", // <<< extra string to run kill-node task prior to build task
"command": "dotnet",
//... the rest of build task code
}
Open launch.json file and insert new string:
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": ".NET Core Launch (web)",
"type": "coreclr",
"request": "launch",
"preLaunchTask": "build",
"postDebugTask": "kill-node", // <<< extra string to run kill-node on debug end
//... the rest of launch.json file
}
}
That's it. Now you can no longer care of the node-zombie instances consuming your memory.
This should be fixed in ASP.NET Core 5.0, try upgrading if possible.
I see a lot of posts how to debug posts and talks on how debug node application and they mostly points to vs code and other command line tools.
As a fan of IntelliJ and WebStorm IDE, is anything I am missing which can save my day while debugging my Node.js application?
Please see https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2014/05/guide-to-node-js-development-with-webstorm/ - this post is not new, but still relevant
Jetbrains has a write up of how to debug Node.js applications that is a good starting point:
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/running-and-debugging-node-js.html
The biggest issue that I've run into is that none of the provided solutions automatically restart your application when changes are made. I've worked around this by using their remote debug functionality and attaching to a server running with nodemon. However, I still have to manually restart the remote debug job in IntelliJ as it does not automatically reconnect when the remote debug server restarts.
There is an open YouTrack request to add this functionality, but Jetbrain's recommendation is to instead use their Live Edit functionality.
Live Edit is bundled by default with Webstorm, but has to be installed on IntelliJ Ultimate. I have not tried using Live Edit with a Node.js application, but their documentation says that it should work.
I recently installed NodeJS Tools for Visual Studio which touts support for Node environments in VS. Notably, it has the ability to set debug breakpoints from the IDE.
It's unclear to me if it is possible to set breakpoints when debugging Gulp tasks. The Task Runner has the ability to detect the Gulp task and output console.log statements to a window, but I haven't found a better means of debugging.
I found this post from a while back: How can I debug gulpfile.js when running it with Visual Studio Task Runner Explorer? However, this post doesn't involve NodeJS Tools for VS. So, I'm re-asking the question to take that plugin into consideration.
You can. Right-click the Node project, select Properties, and configure your app as follows (in the image, default is the Gulp task that you want to run).
Alternative method:
In a terminal, and in the directory where the gulpfile is, run node --debug=44331 --debug-brk ../node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js default. In my case, default is the task name I want to run/debug.
In Visual Studio, go to Debug | Attach to Process. Select Node.js Remote debugging as Transport, and in the qualifier select localhost:44331. Press enter and you should see the Node process appear in the list. Click Attach.
Voila, the breakpoints are hit.
A couple of things to notice:
If you get something like Unable to attach to process. Error 0x80004005 use a different port. I couldn't get it to work with port 5858.
It may not work the first time you attach to the process (see my previous screenshot how I got ECANCELED?). Try again.
I am creating a purely server side nodejs app in visual studio and the majority of times I go to debug it, it does not start running my javascript.
I see "Debugger listening on port xxxx" and nothing else.
Opening and closing the project solves it and have had some luck manually ending the VSHub.exe process (maybe coincidental) but I don't want to have to do this everytime I debug.
Anyone seeing this or got any ideas?
This is a known issue with the node js tools extension.
The fix was included in dev build v1.1.Dev-9.17.2015 which is available from here until it is included in an official release.
I had the same problem with the Community version, deleting the project, reinstalling VS2015, then recreating the project seems to have fixed it.
Mysterious.
I recently converted a mingw/cygwin build to a Visual C++ cl.exe build and upon initial testing found it crashes at launch. I then installed it in my developer environment to debug it, under which it runs just fine. My initial suspicion was that I was linking to a different DLL in that context, but examining both processes in both contexts with Process Explorer showed that they were using the same versions of the same DLLs.
Since I can't reproduce the issue with Visual C++ installed I installed the remote debugger on the client machine, but I can't manage to attach to the process quickly enough before it crashes. Is there a good way to go about doing this? This would be easy if I could launch the process under the debugger locally, but that doesn't look like a viable option here.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!
You should be letting the remote debugger start the debugee process on the remote machine.