Can't debug typescript nodejs application in vs-code

Question

I'm trying to debug my typescript express application with vs-code debugger, it works fine with node 16 but throw an error Unknown file extension .ts when i upgraded my project like node to 20 lts and commonjs to esm.

So far i've node 20.11.1, ts-node 10.9.2 and nodemon 3.0.1

This is my vs-code launch.json

{
    "type": "node",
    "request": "launch",
    "name": "Typescritpt node",
    "skipFiles": [
        "<node_internals>/**"
    ],
    "runtimeExecutable": "nodemon",
    "internalConsoleOptions": "neverOpen",
    "console": "integratedTerminal",
    "program": "${file}",
}

I've tried using --esm flag but it doesn't helped me.

Answer 1

You cannot use ts-node-esm or --esm anymore with node 20.11.1 and ts-node 10.9.2 because there are so many incompatibility between them.

When i've face this is error, i decided to use tsx instead of ts-node which is seamlessly support for both commonjs and ESModule

1. Install tsx globally

   npm install -g tsx
   

2. Create nodemon.json since ts-node is default compiler we have to change that to tsx

    {
        "execMap": {
            "ts": "tsx"
        }
    }
   

3. Add this to package.json

    "scripts": {
      "dev": "nodemon index.ts"
    }
   

4. Finally configure launch.json

   {
        "type": "node",
        "request": "attach",
        "name": "Attach process",
        "processId": "${command:PickProcess}",
        "restart": true,
    }
   

Start the debug server using new command npm run dev and choose the process to attach vs-code debugger