In awe of what vscode can do

I was originally hoping to drop the long awaited 2nd Preview of MapGuide Open Source 4.0 this week, but sadly some show-stopping bugs have crept up on the Linux side that means that sadly I have to push back the release until at least this one particular show-stopper for the PostgreSQL FDO provider is addressed.

Because this bug is present only on Linux it means we have to dive into gdb and try to debug through how this provider is producing garbage SRID values that result in broken PostGIS spatial queries.

Now normally I would dread at this prospect because gdb is command-line based and I miss being able to easily debug and step through code graphically with Visual Studio, but that was then and nowadays things are a lot different.

• We now have VSCode, un-doubtedly the most popular code editor that is also multi-platform.
• VSCode has extensions for C++ intellisense and integrated debugging with gdb
• For MGOS 4.0, we now also build MapGuide/FDO for Linux inside docker containers.
• VSCode also has extensions for remote development inside docker containers.

So this show-stopper has presented the perfect opportunity to see how hard or easy it is to tie all these pieces together for a nice debugging experience.

I start by spinning up the FDO build container and a PostgreSQL docker container to run our test code against.

Then after installing the remote extensions, I click the green box which then gives me an option to attach to a running docker container.

Which then shows the list of running docker containers, which includes my FDO build container

This then spawns up a second VSCode instance that allows me to open a folder within the running container. The FDO source code which I want to step through is accessible in this container, so I pick that folder.

Now if the experience here is the same as though I wanted to debug through this code from *outside* the container, I would then need to make sure the C++ extension is installed. I notice in this case that the extension UI shows local and remote installed extensions, so I have to install the C++ extension remotely.

If the debug experience for remote sources is the same as for local, then what should happen next is that I make a launch.json set up to run gdb with the executable that contains our test code. VSCode nicely creates a useful starting launch.json for me to tweak to what I need.

At this point, I make sure gdb is installed in the FDO build container, find some source code to stick some break points and hit the play button on the debug tab to start debugging and lo and behold ...

I am now visually debugging and stepping through the FDO source code! Just like Visual Studio on Windows. There was some small setup involved, but the process was mostly seamless.

VSCode is one truly amazing editor! With the right extensions, it can match any dedicated IDE in capabilities.

Now to tackle the actual show-stopper in question.