If you develop your application in Visual Studio Code, you can debug it with mirrord using our Visual Studio Marketplace extension. Simply:

  1. Download the extension
  2. Enable mirrord using the “mirrord” button on the bottom toolbar
  3. Run or debug your application as you usually do

When you start a debugging session with mirrord enabled, you’ll be prompted with a target selection quick pick. This quick pick will allow you to select the target in your Kubernetes cluster that you want to impersonate.

The toolbar button enables/disables mirrord for all run and debug sessions.

mirrord’s initial state on startup can be configured in the VSCode settings:

{
    "mirrord.enabledByDefault": true
}

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Enabling/disabling mirrord for a specific launch configuration

mirrord can be persistently enabled or disabled for a specific launch configuration, regardless of the toolbar button state. This is controlled via the MIRRORD_ACTIVE environment variable in your launch configuration. The value "1" keeps mirrord always enabled, while the value "0" disables it.

{
  "env": {
    // mirrord always enabled
    "MIRRORD_ACTIVE": "1"

    // mirrord always disabled
    // "MIRRORD_ACTIVE": "0"
  }
}

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Selecting session target

mirrord’s target can be specified in two ways:

  1. with the target selection quick pick

    • The quick pick will only appear if the mirrord config does not specify the target.
    • The quick pick will initially show targets in the namespace specified in the mirrord config (.target.namespace). If the namespace is not specified, your Kubernetes user’s default namespace will be used.
    • If you want to see targets in a different namespace, there is an option to “Select Another Namespace”.

  2. in the mirrord config’s target section

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Using the mirrord config

The extension allows for using the mirrord config. For any run/debug session, the mirrord config to be used can be specified in multiple ways:

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Active config

The toolbar dropdown menu allows for specifying a temporary mirrord config override. This config will be used for all run/debug sessions.

To specify the override, use Select active config action.

You will be prompted with a quick pick where you can select a mirrord config from your project files. For the file to be present in the dialog, it must either be located in a directory which name ends with .mirrord, or have a name that ends with mirrord. Accepted config file extensions are: json, toml, yml and yaml.

You can remove the override using the same action.

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Config for launch configuration

If no active config is specified, the extension will try to read the config file path from the MIRRORD_CONFIG_FILE environment variable specified in the launch configuration.

This path should be absolute.

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Config from default path

If the config file path is not specified in the launch configuration environment, the plugin will try to find a default config.

The default config is the lexicographically first file in <PROJECT ROOT>/.mirrord directory that ends with mirrord. Accepted config file extensions are: json, toml, yml and yaml.

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Managing the mirrord binary

The extension relies on the standard mirrord CLI binary.

By default, the extension checks the latest release version and downloads the most up-to-date binary in the background. You can disable this behavior in the VSCode settings:

{
  "mirrord.autoUpdate": false
}

You can also pin the binary version with:

{
  "mirrord.autoUpdate": "3.128.0"
}

To use a specific mirrord binary from your filesystem:

{
  "mirrord.binaryPath": "/path/to/local/mirrord/binary"
}

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WSL

The guide on how to use the extension with remote development on WSL can be found here.