How do I attach a debugger to my Spring Boot application in AWS Cloud9?

Question

I am using AWS's Cloud9 IDE to work on a Spring Boot application.

I have created a "shell command" run configuration that uses the following command to start my application:

mvn spring-boot:run -f pom.xml -DlogPathProperty=/path/to/log/directory

The Cloud9 debugger does not seem to attach to my program by default when I run it this way. Because I'm not using "Runner: Auto" (which appears to do precisely nothing in my environment), I cannot click the bug icon to turn on the debugger.

Research suggests that I should be able to run the above command using mvnDebug instead of mvn and then I should be able to attach a debugger, but I'd really like to be able to use the debugger that's built into the IDE. The AWS Cloud9 documentation is pretty opaque, so I could really use some help from a human.

Answer 1

First, click Edit launch configurations and then add the below snippet. And then run "mvnDebug spring-boot:run" It will start listening to the port 8000 and you can click the drop down adjacent to Run button to attach the debugger.

{
"configurations": [
    {
        "type": "java",
        "name": "Debug (Attach)",
        "request": "attach",
        "hostName": "localhost",
        "port": 8000
    },
    {
        "type": "java",
        "name": "Debug (Launch)",
        "request": "launch",
        "mainClass": "",
        "args": ""
    }
],
"version": "0.2.0"

}

Snapshot below.

And then you should be able to debug the application.