Debugging PowerShell in VS Code
By Josh Duffney
Course info
Course info
Description
Many people do not take the time required to become proficient at debugging. They believe it's not worth the time investment. What they don't realize is that mastering debugging actually saves them a lot more time than they would put in. In this course, Debugging PowerShell in VS Code, you'll learn the mental process behind debugging. First, you'll learn how to debug with Visual Studio Code. Next you'll be introduced to Pester, a testing framework for PowerShell. Finally, you'll discover how to take advantage of the advanced debugging features in Visual Studio Code such as watches, call stacks, and conditional breakpoints. After you've finished the course, you'll have the knowledge required to be a proficient debugger of PowerShell code.
About the author
Josh Duffney is an IT Professional turned PowerShell Developer who is fascinated by all things DevOps and automation. He is a Pluralsight author, speaker, blogger, technical writer, and an automation engineer.
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Section Introduction Transcripts
Course Overview
Debugging is one of the most underappreciated skills, but it is also something that separates a good developer from a great developer. My name is Josh Duffney, and welcome to my course Debugging PowerShell in Visual Studio Code. In this course, you will learn the process behind debugging, as well as how to use Visual Studio Code to debug your PowerShell code. You'll also learn how to take advantage of the advanced debugging features in Visual Studio Code and be introduced to Pester, which is a testing framework for PowerShell. Before beginning this course, you should have a pretty good background in PowerShell. By the end of the course, you will know everything you need to know to effectively debug in Visual Studio Code. You can finally leave those Write-Host messages out of your code. I hope you'll join me on this journey and learn to debug PowerShell with Visual Studio Code.
Getting Started with the Debugger
In the previous module, you got a taste of what it looks like to use the debugger in Visual Studio Code. It was most likely exciting and at the same time a little overwhelming. This module starts off by introducing you to debugging concepts. You will also learn how to navigate the debugger in Visual Studio Code. And by the end of the module, you will have learned how to debug PowerShell code with Visual Studio Code. Before we dive into this module, I first want to point out that there are two different ways to debug PowerShell while using Visual Studio Code. The first is to use a command line debugger. PowerShell has a few cmdlets available to assist you with debugging at the command line. This module, however, focuses on the second way, which is the Visual Studio Code debugger. Some of the debugging concepts, like breakpoints, are applicable to both; however, I wanted to clarify this upfront as it can be a little confusing at first. I will talk more about the command line debugger later on in the course, but this module in particular will be focused on the debugger in Visual Studio Code.