Persist Extensions on launch

[cgarrovillo]

{
  // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
  // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
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  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Hello",
      "type": "firefox",
      "request": "launch",
      "reAttach": true,
      "url": "http://localhost:4000/",
    }
  ]
}

Under launch mode, a fresh Firefox instance is opened, one with no account synced and no extensions. Is there an override or anything of some sort that lets "launch" launch a browser instance that's just like a regular launch with remote debugging enabled?

[hbenl]

Yes, by default this extension will create a temporary Firefox profile for debugging in launch mode. The reason for this is that the permission to control Firefox with an external debugger is permanently stored in that profile - and that shouldn't be done to your default profile because it would create a security risk for your browser. But you can change that:

• you can set profile to the name of a profile (the default profile is usually called default, but you can create more with the Profile Manager): this will make a temporary copy of that profile every time you start a debugging session. Only downside: sometimes profiles can become quite large and in that case creating a copy every time you start debugging can become a performance issue.
• if you additionally set keepProfileChanges to true, this extension will work directly with the given profile (instead of copying it), permanently modifying it to allow external debugging. Only downside: since you shouldn't do that with your default profile, you need to open the Profile Manager and create a profile for debugging first
• instead of the profile setting you can also use profileDir: this will let you use any directory as a profile directory. Especially useful together with keepProfileChanges: just start with an empy directory and it will automatically be turned into your debugging profile

[cgarrovillo]

@hbenl Thanks for the detailed reply.

Do you know how "transferrable" this is? We have a central repository setup with multiple developers with different OSes, or would we have to find another way (like multiple launch.json configs etc.)? How does it handle a profile or profileDir that doesn't exist?

[hbenl]

If profileDir points to a non-existent directory, it will be created. So for your situation you could set

"profileDir": "${workspaceFolder}/.firefox-profile",
"keepProfileChanges": true

This should work on all OSes. You should then also add that directory to .gitignore so that nobody accidentally commits the profile to the repository.