Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (known commonly as VSCode) is a free code editor developed by Microsoft. As such it has extensive documentation about its general use, which we will not repeat here. Instead this page will focus on the ways to get the most out of VSCode when developing code for Student Robotics.

Python Extension

While VSCode has some built-in support for developing Python, we recommend that you additionally install the official Python extension. This brings more comprehensive support and enables everything else we will document here.

Code Completions

In order for VSCode to pick up the sr.robot library and offer completions you’ll need to tell it where to find the library files:

Open the workspace containing your code.
Open your workspace settings file:
- On Windows/Linux - File > Preferences > Settings.
- On macOS - Code > Preferences > Settings.
Select Workspace (rather then User).
Search for python.autoComplete.extraPaths.
Click “Edit in settings.json”.
Add the path to the directory which contains the sr directory, within double quotes. The path can be either relative to your project or absolute.

For example if developing code for the simulator and you have extracted the simulator directory next to your code:
```
.
├── competition-simulator-<version>
│   ├── ...
│   ├─ modules
│   │   └── sr
│   │       └── robot
│   │           └── ...
│   └─ worlds
│       └── Arena.wbt
└── robot.py
```
then the path you should add is "competition-simulator-<version>/modules/".

Interactive Debugging

This section refers to a feature which is only available within the simulator.

Interactive debugging is a great way to inspect what your code is doing whilst the simulator is actually running. It will allow you to inspect the values of variables throughout the code and even re-run sections to understand how they interact.

There are two initial setup steps (installing debugpy and configuring VSCode) and then two steps each time you want to debug your code.

Install `debugpy`

In order for VSCode to be able to debug your code as it runs in the simulator you will need to install the debugpy Python package. You will use this package in your Python code to signal that it is ready for VSCode to attach to it, so it needs to be installed into the same Python environment that Webots is configured to use.

python -m pip install debugpy

You may need to use the full path to your python, or on some platforms it may be called python3.

On Windows, if specifying a full path to python.exe, you should use the basic Command Prompt (and not the terminal within VSCode or PowerShell).

Configure VSCode

Next, we are going to create a debug configuration so that VSCode knows what you want it to debug.

Open the workspace containing your code.
Open your robot.py file.
Select the Run view in the sidebar (or press Ctrl + Shift + D / ⌘ + ⇧ + D on macOS)
Click “create a launch.json file”.
In the menu which appears, if you are asked to select an environment select Python.
When asked for a Debug Configuration, select Remote Attach.
Leave the subsequent values at their defaults (press Enter twice).

This will create a new file in your project which contains the configuration.

Depending on the location of your robot code is within your project, you may need to adjust the configuration further.

If your code is in the root of your workspace:

.
└── robot.py

then no further changes are needed.

If your code is within a folder, perhaps because your workspace includes the simulator folder and your code is in zone-0 or zone-1:

.
├── competition-simulator-<version>
│   ├── ...
│   └─ worlds
│       └── Arena.wbt
└── zone-1
    └── robot.py

then you will need to modify the pathMappings key within the configuration. The change you’ll need to make is to alter the localRoot key such that it accounts for the sub-directory containing the robot code.

In the above example, the change would be to update the line:

    "localRoot": "${workspaceFolder}",

to instead be:

    "localRoot": "${workspaceFolder}/zone-1",

Configure your code

To debug a given part of your code, you will need to insert into your code a statement which will launch the debugger.

At the place in your code that you would like the debugger to start, insert the following snippet:

import debugpy
debugpy.listen(5678)
debugpy.wait_for_client()
breakpoint()

This code (specifically the wait_for_client call) will block until the debugger is attached.

Run and debug

You can now launch your code in the simulator exactly as you would normally. When your code stops running (the simulation will also stop processing) change to VSCode and select Run > Start Debugging or press F5.

VSCode will attach to your code, paused at the breakpoint() line.

A full tutorial of debugging in VSCode is beyond the scope of this article, though the most common commands (all available from the Run menu) are:

Step Over (F10)
Step Into (F11)
Step Out (Shift + F11)
Continue (F5)

You can also inspect the values of variables in your code by hovering over them.

Documentation