Debugging Jest unit tests with breakpoints in VS Code with React Native

Question

I created a React Native project using the popular Ignite CLI v2.0.0 with the default boilerplate. Then I adorned it with a bunch of nodejs shims, because I\'ll

Answer 1

Finally found the solution. It seems there are still a number of issues with the new inspector protocol in Node 8.*. In short the support for --inspect is still quite experimental.

For example the NodeJS Inspector Manager (NiM 0.13.8) was crashing and disconnecting websocket after few second (See: NiM Github issue #17 and Chromium bug #734615).

So I downgraded NodeJS 8.1.2 --> 7.10.1

Now finally things work as expected. I can do all debugging in VS code, hit all the breakpoints, with the following debug configuration:

    {
        "type": "node",
        "request": "launch",
        "name": "Launch Tests",
        "program": "${workspaceRoot}/node_modules/.bin/jest",
        "args": [
            "--runInBand",
            "--no-cache"
        ],
        "runtimeArgs": [
            "--debug-brk=127.0.0.1:5858"
        ],
        "port": 5858
    }

Wasted more than a day on something that should be a 5 min. no-brainer. But luckily its working now!