Dead simple debugging for node.js using chrome-devtools.

Node added support for v8-inspector in v6.3.0 but launching the debugger for a given process is still a little clumsy. inspect-process solves the following problems:

• Opening and refreshing devtools - A new instance is launched each time a process is launched.
• Unable to debug executables - Looks up path to executables such as mocha, grunt, by looking in PATH prior to resolving as a file.
• 'Unable to open devtools socket: address already in use' - Finds an open port prior to starting the inspector. Begins searching for available ports starting at the node default inspector port, 9229.
• Requiring debug-brk - Bypasses the user requirement of setting this flag by ensuring devtools is connected prior to advancing. Just set your debug break points, and inspect-process will be able to pick it up.

Behind the scenes inspect-process attempts to normalize your experience by:

• Hiding the noisy output broadcast by the default --inspect flag. You don't need to worry about attaching,detaching, and cleaning up. Just inspect.
• Automatically forcing color output; plays nicely with any module utilzing supports-color.

inspect-process is only a small wrapper around the native --inspect functionaltiy provided by node. The key differences between utilizing --inspect and node-inspector can be found in this comment by pavelfeldman

Install this globally and you'll have access to the inspect command anywhere on your system.

npm install -g inspect-process

Inspecting a file

$ inspect index.js

Inspecting an executable

$ inspect grunt

Passing arguments to process

Just pass your arguments after the process.

inspect index.js --argument=val

Passing arguments to node

Arguments are passed to the process just as if you were utilizing the node CLI.

inspect --harmony index.js

--debug-exception Pause debugger on exceptions. [boolean]

--log-level: The level to display logs at. [string] (choices: "silly", "verbose", "info")

Install Dependencies

npm install

Run

npm test

Inspecting a child process is not currently possible (and most likely never will be). Unfortunately inspect-process can not force child processes to spawn with the necessary --inspect flag.

This is clear when looking at all of the provided mocha examples. The actual mocha executable is a wrapper that spawns _mocha (done in order to allow passing flags to the node process). In order to use mocha with inspect-process, we have to bypass that first indirection and use the _mocha exectuable directly: inspect _mocha.

If you have control of the source code responsible for spawning the child process, it is technically possible to still utilize inspect-process by working with programatic api, however this is not recommended for most use cases.

Versions of Node prior to 7.1.0 require a specific devtools version which is downloaded from the cloud (hence "remote" in the URL string). Node 7.1.0 and on will be exposing a stable protocol which will work with the devtools version bundled with the Chrome (source).

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