Defold Kit — Visual Studio Code Extension

totoetlititi · December 19, 2024, 10:21pm

Thanks for your help and your time !
I can find a way to build form Bob with:

Defold/packages/jdk-21.0.5+11/bin/java -cp Defold/packages/defold-83536c65275c04366b704b2fd3f3d681c88b8267.jar "com.dynamo.bob.Bob" --variant debug --output build/defoldkit build

It works fine: 100% ...done!

Then I need to make linux dmengine executable, and copy it inside build/defoldkit

chmod +x build/x86_64-linux/dmengine
cp build/x86_64-linux/dmengine build/defoldkit/
build/defoldkit/dmengine

And… TADA ! It works !
How I can achieve this from your extension ?

astrochili · December 20, 2024, 6:58am

This is what extension do. At least it’s expected .

Could you take a look at logs please? Select the Output tab and Defold Kit to check what’s the difference between your manual scenario and the automated one by the extension?

totoetlititi · December 20, 2024, 10:20pm

I believe I have identified the issue. While debugging in VSCodium still results in the same error, the code executes successfully when run directly from another terminal within the Defold project or from the build folder. However, running the code from the VSCodium terminal produces the same error.

The problem appears to be related to the Flatpak version of VSCodium (the same issue occurs with the Flatpak version of Visual Studio Code). The sandboxing system used by Flatpak seems to prevent access to certain environment variables, libraries, or paths outside of the sandbox. This restriction is likely causing the libGLU.so.1 library to be unavailable, resulting in the error.

totoetlititi · December 21, 2024, 9:32am

Workaround for flatpak version of VSCodium:

In project: .vscode/launch.json, modify:

key "command" to:

"program": {
   "command": "/app/bin/host-spawn",
},

key "args" to:

 "args": [
   "build/defoldkit/dmengine",
   "build/defoldkit/game.projectc"
],

Example: launch.json

{
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Defold Kit",
            "type": "lua-local",
            "request": "launch",
            "stopOnEntry": false,
            "verbose": false,
            "internalConsoleOptions": "openOnSessionStart",
            "program": {
                "command": "/app/bin/host-spawn",
            },
            "args": [
                "build/defoldkit/dmengine",
                "build/defoldkit/game.projectc"
            ],
            "windows": {
                "program": {
                    "command": "build\\defoldkit\\dmengine.exe"
                },
                "args": [
                    "build\\defoldkit\\game.projectc"
                ]
            },
            "preLaunchTask": "Defold Kit: Build to Launch"
        }
    ]
}

robotiger77 · February 9, 2025, 2:27pm

Hello, I have just started experimenting with VS Code and Defold Kit extension.

However, I have a problem. When I run debug session with a breakpoint, it stops on it properly but later on, if I untoggle it (the breakpoint), resume execution, and toggle back, the program doesn’t stop on it anymore. Is this normal behavior? I have added the debugger.script to my main collection.

astrochili · February 9, 2025, 7:53pm

Hello,

There is some limitation of Lua Local Debugger extension. It updates breakpoints only during pauses, not at the runtime. The issue has already been resolved, but hasn’t merged in 3 years, don’t know why.

Two workarounds:

Call debugger.requestBreak() by some way in your game to request a pause to update all the breakpoint on that moment. For example, by pressing the ‘D’ key.
Try to find and use a fork of Lua Local Debugger where the PR is merged (this one?)

robotiger77 · February 10, 2025, 7:57am

Thank you for the answer. I added a key binding to break the debugger and can toggle the breakpoints to my heart’s content during that pause.

I have just found that my question has been answered in the docs of the extension, pardon!

Dreamer_Android · February 26, 2025, 7:12am

Hi, amazing extension, could you check this:

astrochili · February 26, 2025, 2:26pm

Hi @Dreamer_Android,

Spine is an external extension that adds functions to the gui namespace. Since it is an external extension, that’s not correct to include its annotations in the annotations releases because it should be avaulable only when the external extension is added to the project.

I see two ways to have annotations for external extensions:

Add lua annotations to the repo of the extension (PR / maintaining). This is a manual way without any perspectives to cover all the existing extensions, but it works out of box.
Start to parse *.script_api files.

Parsing *.script_api` files

On the one hand, this is better to do in astrochili/defold-annotations, since all annotation generation is already there. But it is not clear how to run this script in the VSCode extension on the fly, without having to run the Lua runtime.

On the other hand, for the solution to be included in the Defold Kit, it’s better to write it in TypeScript. But then there would be another parser / annotation generator, which is not very optimal…

I don’t know yet which solution is optimal and how the Defold Editor solves this prioblem (script_api + lua language server) for itself.

anikoy · March 6, 2025, 9:03pm

Hi there,

First off, thanks so much for this extension—really appreciate it!

I have a quick question: Is it possible to configure the debugger so I can step into library code?

For example, I’m using the Druid framework, and when I try to step into a library function, the debugger only shows the filename and line number but not the actual code.

I know this works when debugging in the Defold editor, so I’m wondering if there’s a setting I need to adjust in VS Code to get the same behavior.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

astrochili · March 7, 2025, 3:50pm

Hi!

Theoretically it should work if you add the workspace storage path from the .vscode/settings.json file (e.g. ...workspaceStorage/.../astronachos.defold/) to the Local Lua Debugger launch configuration file .vscode/launch.json.

Look at scriptFiles and scriptRoots for details and examples.

UPDATE:
It works! But the path should be full, without any shortcuts like ~. A tilde doesn’t work here.

anikoy · March 7, 2025, 5:37pm

Awesome, that did the trick! Debugging is so much easier now:)

Thanks a ton!

ChrisR · October 9, 2025, 4:46am

Edit: this appears to be this fixed bug: dmengine.exe removed from bob.jar · Issue #50 · astrochili/vscode-defold · GitHub

Resolved. It turns out I had imported from Visual Studio today, and that overwrote the newer 2.10 with the fix for the bug above with 2.09 because Cursor’s extension repository still has 2.09 (Open VSX Registry). By downloading the VSIX from the Microsoft extension repo and installing that directly I was able to get it working again. I assume if I import from VSCode again the same thing will happen, though.

Original message:

Hi, I’ve been using the extension with Cursor (AI focused VS Code fork), and it was working great until today. I don’t know what happened (maybe a version update) but now it fails to launch my project because it can’t find dmengine.exe. I don’t fully follow what’s going on in the output, but I see:

<snip>
2025-10-08 21:34:53.886 [info] Extracting the vanilla engine from Defold to 'c:\Users\chris\defoldai\Story\build\defoldkit\dmengine.exe'
2025-10-08 21:34:53.888 [info] Jar Extracting $: "c:\Defold\packages\jdk-21.0.5+11\bin\jar" -xf "c:\Defold\packages\defold-1ba9e1aa422166864c3267f03f5110144b745c1e.jar" "_unpack\x86_64-win32\bin\dmengine.exe"
2025-10-08 21:34:53.888 [info] Jar Extracting: [starting]
2025-10-08 21:34:54.059 [info] Jar Extracting: [exit 0]
2025-10-08 21:34:54.059 [info] Copying '_unpack\x86_64-win32\bin\dmengine.exe' to 'c:\Users\chris\defoldai\Story\build\defoldkit\dmengine.exe'
2025-10-08 21:34:54.061 [info] Exception occured during copying file: EntryNotFound (FileSystemError): File to move/copy does not exist

When I inspected that jar (by renaming it to a zip), there was no dmengine.exe at that path in _unpack, just dmengine.pdb. If I run the same jar -xf command in a terminal with dmengine.exe, it exits with no error, but doesn’t create anything to be copied. If I edit the command to use dmengine.pdb, it extracts that into the path.

So it makes sense to me that it can’t find dmengine.exe. But I have no idea how to fix it. Is there another way to get the dmengine, or a specific version of Defold I need to use that has it at that location?

Any help would be appreciated!

astrochili · October 9, 2025, 8:29pm

Hi!
I’m glad to hear that your problem has been solved.

To be honest, I’m not an expert on automatically delivering extensions to all editors and platforms (cursor / vscode / codium / open-vsx / marketplace, etc.), and the only two places where I publish the extension are Visual Studio Marketplace and GitHub, so you can always download the .vsix file from the releases page.

miokey · October 10, 2025, 3:31am

i think i miss something that vscode does not suppot *.script files ,what should i do

astrochili · October 11, 2025, 10:06am

Hi,

Check your .vscode/settings.json for the next lines:

  "files.associations": {
...
    "*.script": "lua",
    "*.gui_script": "lua",
    "*.render_script": "lua",
    "*.editor_script": "lua",
...

If these lines are not present, run Defold Kit: Setup from the Command Palette and ensure that you have checked the “Add recommended workspace settings” option.

Lodrasyll · November 13, 2025, 12:07pm

Hello!Greeting!(first time use vscode extension )I want to know how to get others extensions api? In defold editor it works like this, but in vscode it seem not works. thanks!

astrochili · November 14, 2025, 8:24am

Hi,

At the moment, the only way is contributing Lua annotations to the native extension repositories. The problem is that there are no Lua files in the native extensions, only a script_api files, which are not parsed anyway.

Lodrasyll · November 14, 2025, 11:04am

thanks for your replying！I understand！

astrochili · November 14, 2025, 10:20pm

I hope this PR whould help for defOS at least.