VS Code Tunnel — Azure DevOps Pipeline Task

Enables live debugging of an Azure Pipelines job using an instance of Visual Studio Code Server running inside the pipeline agent.

This is an Azure DevOps adaptation of JustinGrote/VSCode-action, which provides the same capability for GitHub Actions.

Usage

Add the task to your pipeline YAML at the point where you want to pause for debugging. It is strongly recommended to make the step conditional so it only activates on failure or when explicitly enabled:

steps:
  - task: VSCodeTunnel@1
    condition: failed()        # Only start the tunnel when a previous step fails
    displayName: 'VS Code Debug Tunnel'
    inputs:
      tunnelName: 'my-pipeline-tunnel'   # optional — max 20 chars
      connectionTimeout: 5               # optional — minutes, default 5
      sessionTimeout: 60                 # optional — minutes, default 60
      noCacheCliAuth: false              # optional — default false
      authProvider: github             # optional — 'github' (default) or 'microsoft'

On first run, the task will print a link in the pipeline log for device code login. Open the link, sign in, and then access the VS Code instance via your browser or the VS Code desktop app using Remote Tunnels: Connect to Tunnel from the Command Palette.

Authentication

The task supports two authentication providers for the VS Code CLI, selectable via the authProvider input:

• microsoft (default) — Azure AD / Microsoft account device code flow. Appropriate for Azure DevOps environments.
• github — GitHub OAuth flow. Use this if you prefer to authenticate with your GitHub account.

On subsequent runs with noCacheCliAuth: false (the default), the auth token is stored in a local directory on the agent and reused, so device-code login is only required when the token expires. Set noCacheCliAuth: true for a fresh auth on every run (more secure).

Note for Microsoft-hosted agents: Microsoft-hosted agents are ephemeral, so cached auth tokens are lost between runs. You will need to authenticate on every run or use a self-hosted agent for persistent token caching.

Inputs

Output Variables

Resuming the Pipeline

Once you are done debugging, create an adocontinue file on the agent to allow the pipeline to continue:

touch /adocontinue
# or
touch ~/adocontinue

The task polls for these files every 5 seconds and exits cleanly when detected, allowing subsequent pipeline steps to run.

Credits

Based on JustinGrote/VSCode-action — a GitHub Actions version of the same concept.