What is the pwa-node type launch configuration on VSCode?

Question

I noticed that the default launch configuration generated by VSCode for npm debugging (Launch via NPM) sets the configuration type as "pwa-node" by default.

Answer 1

The pwa- prefix is/was a way to target VS Code's new JavaScript debugger, which at the time was named vscode-pwa.

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-js-debug/pull/32

Talking with Kai and Rob, something we want to do is make the PWA extension a drop-in replacement for the existing two Chrome and Node debug extensions. Therefore we want to have the PWA extension be able to read and support the existing configuration settings, and be invoked by launching the chrome and node types. More work, coming soon in a followup PR, will be needed to actually deal with these settings.

This also moved the build to a Gulp system, supporting NLS and matching the existing extensions. Part of the build is the ability to have the types and commands be prefixed with pwa-: running gulp will generate an extension that registers types pwa-node and pwa-chrome, while gulp --drop-in will remove these prefixes. This lets us develop and debug the extension using the existing packages, until such time as we want to start dogfooding it.

Also here they talk about how to use the targeting mechanism: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/85984