Lab 4.2 - Setting a Breakpoint Using a Code Keyword

I am having the same issue. Node version 12.19.0

The same behaviour shows up when using NodeJS v12.18.4 LTS.
The --inspect-brk option does not stop at the line with debugger statement but the first executing line. When continuing execution then it stops at the line with the debugger statement.

I mentioned this in the second part of my post from October 4th which was made visible today.
https://forum.linuxfoundation.org/discussion/857623/why-do-the-dynamic-evaluation-and-debugging-examples-have-different-behaviour-on-node-v12-18-4-lts#latest

Best,
Zorawar

thanks for bringing this up everyone, it does indeed seem to be a bug in Node. I'm going to reach out to core team members and see what can be done to fix it, if it continues to stall I'll update the training to work around this

@ghortat no it's not changed, node inspect is a command line interface, node --inspect initialises the devtools debugging protocol that can be connected to via chrome://inspect.

The problem with the specific example is there is no time between executing the command with --inspect and the runtime hitting the debugger statement to actually connect to the inspector protocol. The debugger statement is ignored as usual, because when using --inspect if there's no debugger client connected, the runtime isn't in a debugging mode.

So for given code example here, the only approach is to use --inspect-brk.

Where --inspect is applicable is with something like an HTTP server. You can interact with the server normally, and then at some future point connect devtools to the exposed inspect interface and begin to debug it (this would also trigger any debugger statements).

@giacomolm said:
A possible workaround would be to use the setTimeout in the app.js instead of invoking directly the f method, something like
setTimeout(f, 5000)
And click on the chrome "inspect" link within 5 secs

That would be a little less efficient because I don't want to wait that longer.
So I tend to use the debugger integrated in vscode when I am working on a project and want to debug some code.

Still the same problem on chapter 4...
Running the code with debugger keyword on line 2 and "node --inspect app.js" does not stop on line 2 as expected but throws the error.

Windows 11, Node 16.14.0 via NVM

@xdxmxc said:
@cscharr but --inspect-brk works right?

Yes, --inspect-brk still kinda works, but --inspect still does not with Node 16. I say kinda because it initially stops at line 5(f()) and once you click to resume, it then stops at the debugger line.

Also just checked and it is also the case with Node.js v18.2.0