Visual Studio Code Debug Console colors?

Is there a way to display colors (like in a terminal) in the Debug Console of Visual Studio Code (Version 1.10.2) when debugging node.js code?


I guess so far the best way is to put your debug output into alternate destinations:

In Launch Configuration Attributes the console setting can be set to one of the following: internalConsole (default, the builtin Debug Console) externalTerminal (external cmd window) or integratedTerminal (the VS Code terminal).

The external terminal command line can further be specified in the VS Code Settings under one of the following: terminal.external.windowsExec, terminal.external.osxExec, and terminal.external.linuxExec from the default that is your default os terminal.

Source: VS Code docs, for example for node.js: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/nodejs/nodejs-debugging#_launch-configuration-attributes


To output coloured messages from nodejs in visual studio you can use formatted message in console.log method. for example :

console.log('\u001b[' + 32 + 'm' + 'hello stack' + '\u001b[0m')

as implemented in Mocha. 32 is a color code. Other color codes and usage sample you can find in theirs repo: https://github.com/mochajs/mocha/blob/9e95d36e4b715380cef573014dec852bded3f8e1/lib/reporters/base.js#L48

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Or as a log library you can use, for example pinojs + pino-pretty module and your log output will be displayed as here :

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