Pause All Threads on Hitting Breakpoint?

[gcbartlett]

Is it possible to configure a breakpoint (or the debugger in general) to pause all threads when a breakpoint is hit?

I have a scenario where once one of my (worker) threads hits a breakpoint, the main thread continues creating more threads that also end up hitting the same breakpoint. I can manually pause my main thread when my breakpoint is reached, but it would be nice to be able to configure the breakpoint so that all threads are automatically paused. (This would probably need to be integrated with any new Continue All action being discussed elsewhere to make it easier to resume operation).

[testforstephen]

If we support Continue All threads feature, do you think it will mitigate the pain point in your case?

[gcbartlett]

Adding Continue All Threads would be useful, but will only help in my scenario, if a breakpoint can trigger Pause All Threads.

[testforstephen]

The request is to allow setting the suspend policy of the breakpoint.

• SUSPEND_ALL: Suspend all threads when the event occurs.
• SUSPEND_EVENT_THREAD: Suspend only the thread which generated the event when the event occurs.

[aperrone]

News?

[robaho]

This is a significant omission. It makes debugging server processes with 100's of threads near impossible.

[jdconley]

Just started doing some multithreaded Java dev in VS Code and hit this as well. Going to have to debug in a different IDE until this gets fixed.

[rmckewen]

After almost 5 years could we perhaps at least get a due date? This is a necessary & expected feature for debugging multi-threaded applications after all.

[3Fish]

This makes vscode more or less useless when debugging any multithreaded system. It is a big issue for developing things, where parallel threads will time out and kill your process before you have a chance to debug.

[v-p-b]

Ghidra recently started to support VSCode, but this shortcoming makes this development practically useless.

https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/blob/Ghidra_11.3_build/Ghidra/Configurations/Public_Release/src/global/docs/WhatsNew.md#visual-studio-code

[github-actions]

Hi Gary Bartlett (@gcbartlett), I'm an AI Support assistant here to help with your issue. While the team reviews your request, I wanted to provide some possible tips and documentation that might help you in the meantime.

Currently there’s no built-in way in vscode-java-debug to have a breakpoint automatically suspend all threads when hit. As a workaround:

• After a breakpoint is hit, click the “Pause” toolbar button (or press F6) to suspend all threads at once.

This is a known gap in the extension’s feature set. Please consider opening a feature request at the Java Debug extension repo:

• https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-java-debug/issues/new/choose

Other references with low confidence

• Filter for call stack by thread status (filter for call stack #825): thread-filtering UI, but not auto-suspension · filter for call stack #825
• Support “stopOnEntry” in launch.json (Support "stopOnEntry" in launch.json #26): suspends all threads when starting, not on arbitrary breakpoints · Support "stopOnEntry" in launch.json #26

The team will respond to your issue shortly. I hope these suggestions are helpful in the meantime. If this comment helped you, please give it a 👍. If the suggestion was not helpful or incorrect, please give it a 👎. Your feedback helps us improve!