Add configuration option to issue a SIGTERM when the Stop button is clicked in debugger

[DeflateAwning]

I want the ability to use the "Stop" button in the Python debugger in VS Code to send a SIGTERM (and/or maybe a SIGINT) to the running process, instead of just sending it SIGKILL (as it currently does).

This is the "Stop" button I'm talking about:

Proposed Solution

I'm thinking that a new option like this in the launch.json config file could be a good way to introduce this change without being a breaking change for the way everyone is used to the "stop" button working.

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Python Debugger: Current File (Integrated Terminal)",
      "type": "debugpy",
      "request": "launch",
      "program": "${file}",
      "console": "integratedTerminal",
      "stop_action": "SIGKILL", // this would be a new enum-like config option, with values of "SIGKILL", "SIGINT", "SIGTERM", maybe others
    },
  ]
}

Possible additional ideas, more context

• The minimum viable solution is described above.

• SIGKILL (the current behavior) and SIGTERM are the two behaviors I'm personally chasing. SIGINT is another one that would be good to have as an option though.

• As an extended implementation, the stop_action field could support a process like: send SIGTERM, wait 15 seconds, send SIGKILL.

• This feature request stems from wanting to be able to test and debug the AWS Batch end-of-job behavior:

Under the hood, the Amazon ECS StopTask API call is used, which sends a SIGTERM value to the running container task. If after 30 seconds the container is still running, a SIGKILL signal is sent to forcibly stop the container. If the container handles the SIGTERM value gracefully and exits within 30 seconds from receiving it, no SIGKILL value is sent.

Related Previous Issues and Discussions

• Add support for terminate requests or configurable termination signal for running sessions vscode-python#21605
• Ctrl-C doesn't send SIGINT to python program launched with debugger debugpy#500
• When terminating a debug session, is there a configuration option that instructs the debugger to send a SIGTERM instead of a SIGKILL? vscode-python#21582

[paulacamargo25]

Thanks for the feature request! We are going to give the community 60 days to provide 7 👍 upvotes on the opening comment to gauge general interest in this idea. If there's enough upvotes then we will consider this feature request in our future planning. If there's unfortunately not enough upvotes then we will close this issue.

[cdelacruzpinto]

Any intention to retake this? would be super useful to debug actions running on flask/fastapi app shutdown (i.e: closing db, connections, redis, etc)

[mes21]

Hi just wanted to add some support for the proposal, same use case as @cdelacruzpinto on my end.
Glad to see its on the list of things to come :-)

[roechele]

I'm also interested in this as I need some hardware communication channels like pymodbus to be closed gracefully when stopping or restarting my program in debugging. The current behaviour of killing off any debugged program without calling destructors is just not suitable in many cases.

Honestly I even think it should default to SIGTERM because its just expected behaviour that it shuts down programs gracefully but in case you dont want to change anything for other users @DeflateAwning s method of setting an option in launch.json wouldn't interfere with other users experience.

[karthiknadig]

To support this, we would need the underlying debugger to handle such a configuration.

@rchiodo Do we have an issue for this on debugpy?

[rchiodo]

This issue makes me think this is more complicated than at first glance:
microsoft/debugpy#500

But maybe it would work.

There is not another issue that I can find though.

[DeflateAwning]

Just opened this issue to track it: microsoft/debugpy#1818