How to launch a script before run/debug ?

[raphaelcamus]

Hello
I want before each run/debug test, to run a python script, used to prompt user for some input data (target environment,...). Is there an easy way to do so ?

[d-biehl]

No there is no easy way to do this. I think you have 2 possibilities:

1. VSCode has some support for variables and userinput in launch.json see here

2. RobotCode has a feature called robot.toml where you can define execution profiles, an execution profiles you can define different run settings for different situations, like running in different environment, dev/prod/ci or handle different hardware targets, what ever you want.
   After you have defined your profiles, you can simply select this profiles in VSCode in the test explorer or run a specific test with a specific profile. You can find some documentations about robot.toml on RobotCode website there is also a tutorial video where I talk about this feature and show how it works.

[raphaelcamus]

Thanks for quick reply. robot.toml sound good, but is specific to your extension and I need to support PyCharm too (used for a long time by the team).

So, I used those launch configuration:

{
    "name": "RobotCode: Default",
    "type": "robotcode",
    "request": "launch",
    "purpose": "default",
    "args": [
        "--argumentfile",
        "${env:TEMP}/robot-arg-common.txt",
        "--argumentfile",
        "${env:TEMP}/robot-arg-selected.txt",
        "--argumentfile",
        "${env:TEMP}/robot-arg-computed.txt"
    ],
    "presentation": {
        "hidden": true
    },
    "attachPython": true, // See https://github.com/robotcodedev/robotcode/issues/113
    "pythonConfiguration": "RobotCode: Python",
    "preLaunchTask": "Generate Robot Args"
},
{
    "name": "RobotCode: Python",
    "type": "python", // "python" is deprecated but using `debugpy` does not work (no python debug) with robotcode 0.101.0
    "request": "attach",
    "presentation": {
        "hidden": true
    },
    "justMyCode": false // Use this to also debug robotframework internal/other installed libraries
}

and this task:

{
    "label": "Generate Robot Args",
    "type": "shell",
    "command": "python",
    "args": [
        "${workspaceFolder}/path/to/generate-arg-file.py",
        "${workspaceFolder}/${relativeFileDirname}",
        "${env:TEMP}",
        "${workspaceFolder}/.."
    ]
}

with the generate-arg-file.py prompting user for some info and generating the robot-arg-*.txt files

[d-biehl]

Looks good!

Actually, you need the settings attachPython and pythonConfiguration and also the entry with RobotCode: Python, if you leave them out the default settings will be used.

And then you can control the debugging via the VSCode Settings, you have to set the two settings debugpy.debugJustMyCode and robotcode.debug.attachPython to true on project/workspace/folder level.

And just to mention, a PyCharm version of RobotCode is in the works and should be released soon.

[raphaelcamus]

Yes, I have modified my post since, I forgot to put the debug part.
Glad to hear about the PyCharm version of the plugin. Then I can use robot.toml :)