using grunt in launch.json - visual-studio-code

Question

I loaded the yeoman generator-meanjs and opened it with Visual Studio Code.
The debugger works nicely. When I clicked on the debug side bar button a
launch.json file was generated for me. The launch.json generator is looking at the package.json which has "scripts": { "start": "grunt"}.
The generator uses grunt to launch the application. The launch.json file had
the following:
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Launch",
"type": "node",
"request": "launch",
"program": "grunt",
"stopOnEntry": false,
"args": [],
"cwd": ".",
"runtimeExecutable": null,
"runtimeArgs": [
"--nolazy"
],
"env": {
"NODE_ENV": "development"
},
"externalConsole": false,
"sourceMaps": false,
"outDir": null
},
{
"name": "Attach",
"type": "node",
"request": "attach",
"port": 5858
}
]
}
When I replace 'program' : 'grunt' with server.js it works. If I could change the type to grunt, but it seems only node or mono is supported there.

Answer 1

I managed to make it work by using an absolute path to grunt-cli, as follows:
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"type": "node",
"request": "launch",
"name": "Launch Grunt",
"args": ["build"],
"program": "${env.APPDATA}\\npm\\node_modules\\grunt-cli\\bin\\grunt",
"stopOnEntry": true,
"cwd": "${workspaceRoot}"
}
]
}
As pointed by #L.Butz, on newer vscode versions, replace env.APPDATA by env:APPDATA.