VS Code debugging as root user

Question

I have VS Code running on macOS connecting to a linux box where I am doing Go development. I am connecting via a user that has sudo privileges on the linux host. The root account is disabled on the remote host.

The application I am writing needs to run with root privileges. Is there a way to set vscode to elevate privileges when debugging the application? Or do I need to enable the root account for software development purposes?

Answer 1

While not the exact same environment, I suppose that the needed underlying functionality of needing root to debug, test, and run your code from VSCode is the same as in this answer to How can I debug Go file in VS Code with root privileges? here.

The gist: VSCode version 1.65.0 has a new experimental launch option "asRoot": "true", use it with "console": "integratedTerminal".

For instance, in your launch.json:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Test/dbg pkg as root",
            "type": "go",
            "request": "launch",
            "mode": "test",
            "program": "${fileDirname}",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "asRoot": true,
        },
    ]
}

When launching this configuration by pressing F5, a new debug terminal session opens (or might get reused) and the following command executed, needing sudo (which you mentioned you do have rights to use):

/usr/bin/env GOPATH=/home/foobar/go /usr/bin/sudo /home/foobar/go/bin/dlv dap --check-go-version=false --client-addr=:41945