Python Debug Console should be exec based cli instead of eval

[kenseehart]

Having switched from WingIDE to vscode as my primary python development environment, I've been very pleased with vscode for a wide variety of reasons, especially the elegant plugin model. However, there is one feature set that makes WingIDE far more satisfying. That's the debug console. The basic difference is that Wing uses an exec() based cli running in the current stack context for the debug console, whereas vscode only performs single line eval(). Also, vscode doesn't redirect stdin and stderr into the debug console (but makes print() a special case). The python cli model makes it easier to modify variables in the current scope, re-raise exceptions to get to the scope you really want to be debugging, experiment with new code which can then be pasted into source code if it works, etc.

I would love to see a plugin that implements a python cli based debug console.

• act like a python interpreter shell running in the currently selected stack trace
• redirect stdin/stdout to the debug console (with support of the usual regular expression hyperlinks to source code refs)
• push and open up a new stack trace for uncaught exception raised by the exec(), and make it easy to pop to the original stack trace
• support multi-line statements (as one would expect from a python cli)

If this has already been done, I haven't found it. Please reply and let me know.

If this hasn't been done, I might give it a shot as my first vscode plugin. Any suggestions for a starting point to work from?

[brettcannon]

If this has already been done, I haven't found it. Please reply and let me know.

It has not been done. You would need to open feature request for each request and we can redirect it to debugpy if necessary. Do note, though, that having separate debugger and regular output is by design for a clean separation of what the program is doing and what debug information you working with (i.e. so you don't mix them up).

If this hasn't been done, I might give it a shot as my first vscode plugin. Any suggestions for a starting point to work from?

Documentation on how to write an extension can be found at https://code.visualstudio.com/api .