debugger shows javascript object properties with getters as `undefined`

[microsoft]

debugger shows javascript object properties with getters as `undefined`

[felixfbecker]

Indeed annoying for stuff like process.env or XML DOM nodes

[weinand]

The problem is the node debugger protocol. We would fix all those issues if there was an debugger API for that. Node-inspector has exactly the same issues and node-inspector exists much longer than VS Code and has not solved them...

[mjbvz]

If the debugger can evaluate simple expressions, wouldn't Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor return the required information even if the debugging protocol doesn't natively support inspecting getter/setter properties? Could that be leveraged internally?

[weinand]

@mjbvz sure, that's possible. It is just a bit expensive to probe individual object properties that have a value of undefined via evaluate requests for this information. Until node 0.12.x I was relying on injecting debug protocol extensions into node. But this stopped working in later versions.

[felixfbecker]

@weinand the VS Code debug protocol has this boolean property expensive for variables. Is this suited for this case or what is it being used for?

[weinand]

@felixfbecker a 'Scope' has an optional attribute 'expensive'. It is a hint to the UI to refrain from expanding the scope voluntarily.
It could only help if the debug adapter would know upfront that the variables in this scope would require lots of "evals". But knowing this, would require to walk the tree...

[felixfbecker]

Excuse me, I was mixing things up.

[weinand]

Fix in branch improvedDataTypes or April release.