Pass additional arguments to child process when loading plugin file

[boyanio]

Current behavior:

When writing a custom plugin and trying to debug it (e.g., from VSCode), we cannot do this, because the plugin is loaded with fork without initial Node.js arguments.

Desired behavior:

The following Node.js arguments are passed to the child process:

• --inspect-brk
• --inspect-port
• --inspect
• --require

[flotwig]

Great idea!

In the meantime, have you tried running with the environment variable NODE_OPTIONS=--inspect-brk? It will make any processes launched by Cypress launch with --inspect-brk.

[boyanio]

Good point, thanks, I will try it out!

[flotwig]

@brian-mann and I discussed this a little bit, with the goal of getting an argument that is capable of selecting the plugin, the CLI, the Electron app, or all processes for debugging.

Here's kinda what we came up with:

• cypress open --inspect-brk - inspect the plugins process
• cypress open --inspect-brk=1234 - inspect the plugins process on port 1234
• cypress open --inspect-processes=cli,main,plugin --inspect-brk=1234 - inspect all 3 processes, on port 1234, 1235, 1236, respectively - since this is the order they are launched
• cypress open --inspect-processes=main - inspect just main Electron app

--inspect , --inspect-port, and --require will also be passable in this way.

Open to thoughts on this design.

--

For simplicity's sake, we'll probably skip adding --inspect-processes, and just apply this to the plugin process (for now).

[boyanio]

I personally like the proposition (y)

[brian-mann]

--inspect-process is a little less verbose than --inspect-processes, and since the default will only be plugins it kind of acts as a power feature to pass a comma separated list of the others

[jennifer-shehane]

Since this has not had a lot of interest over the years, we’ll close this as not planned.