Topics

Debug .NET Core within a container

Prerequisites

Install the .NET Core SDK, which includes support for attaching to the .NET Core debugger.
Install the Visual Studio Code C# extension, which includes support for attaching to the .NET Core debugger with VS Code.
macOS users only: Add /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/NuGetFallbackFolder as a shared folder in your Docker preferences.

Walkthrough

If needed, create a .NET Core project with dotnet new.
Open the project folder in VS Code.
Wait until a notification appears asking if you want to add required assets for debugging. Select Yes:
Open the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) and enter Docker: Add Docker Files to Workspace.... If you have already dockerized your app, you can instead do Docker: Initialize for Docker debugging. Follow the prompts.
Switch to the Run view (⇧⌘D (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+D)).
Select the Docker .NET Core Launch launch configuration.
Optionally, set a breakpoint.
Start debugging! (F5)

Running and debugging with SSL support

To enable SSL (using the HTTPS protocol), you will need to make a few changes to your configuration.

In the Dockerfile, add an EXPOSE line to the base section to define a separate port for HTTPS / SSL. Keep a separate EXPOSE line with a different port for HTTP requests.
```
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:5.0 AS base
WORKDIR /app
EXPOSE 5000
EXPOSE 5001
```

In the .vscode/tasks.json file, add configureSsl: true to the netCore section. Also, add an environment variable ASPNETCORE_URLS in the dockerRun section of the docker-run: debug task, with the same port numbers you defined in the Dockerfile:

dockerRun: {
    "env": {
       "ASPNETCORE_URLS": "https://+:5001;http://+:5000"
   }
 }
 netCore: {
     "appProject": "${workspacefolder}/MyProject.csproj",
     "enableDebugging": true,
     "configureSsl": true
 }

For additional customization options, see the documentation on Tasks and Debug containerized apps.

04/15/2021