Let user select a version a `runtimeExecutable` path to specific node.js in Node Launch Configuration

[rdicroce]

WWD needs a NodeJS to run language servers, and also to execute NodeJS launch configurations. Currently, there's not much control over which NodeJS is used. You either have to set org.eclipse.wildwebdeveloper.nodeJSLocation in eclipse.ini or add NodeJS to your PATH. This isn't very flexible, and is problematic because I work on multiple projects that use different versions of NodeJS.

Today, I'm just setting nodeJSLocation and living with the fact that language servers are run with a different NodeJS than the projects are built with. And I'm using JSDT's NodeJS launch config to build the projects, since JSDT allows me to select which NodeJS I want.

It would be nice if WWD provided a workspace-level config option to set which NodeJS to use, and used the specified NodeJS to start language servers and to run NodeJS launch configs.

[mickaelistria]

Ultimately, the goal is to ship a version of node.js that's compatible with language servers and made default. This is the topic of #23 . Users shouldn't have to care about dealing which node.js start the language server, so it seems to me that it's not a good thing to work on making it configurable if it's to remove it in the future.
For the node.js execution, the Debug Adapter we're using allows to define the node.js that will actually run the program. It's using runtimeExecutable in the Launch arguments ( https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-node-debug/blob/master/src/node/nodeDebug.ts#L296 ). This version of node.js may be interesting to control by the user as it's a brick of the target execution envisonment; so it would be interesting to provide a way to control it from a Launch Configuration, just like one can configure the working director or parameters. A pull request to provide that would be very welcome; I think it's not a complex addition to make for an Eclipse plugin developer.

[rdicroce]

Sadly, I don't know anything about developing Eclipse plugins. It's something I'd like to learn more about, but given my current workload, that's not going to happen any time soon.

I tried adding runtimeExecutable to the launch parameters, and that did work, so at least there is a solution.

Also it appears my initial statement was wrong: if org.eclipse.wildwebdeveloper.nodeJSLocation is set, WWD is apparently NOT passing that to nodeDebug, because without runtimeExecutable set, my script never launches. Presumably this is because runtimeExecutable defaults to the NodeJS on PATH, and I don't have NodeJS on PATH. Strangely the NodeJS process for nodeDebug itself doesn't terminate in this case. No errors are shown either.

Regardless of whether runtimeExecutable is set or not, I'm seeing #330 happen.

[mickaelistria]

As mentioned, we won't allow user to select the node.js version to start the language server as this is a technical tools integration point that shouldn't have to be managed by users. This is the topic of #23 .
However, we could add a tab or some UI entries to the Node.js launch configuration in order to let users override the node version to use for their tests.
I'm renaming the ticket to emphasize on this 2nd point.

[akurtakov]

I am closing this one as there is no plan to allow switching nodejs for language servers.