Can I make nodejs --debug flag wait for a remote connection

Question

I would like to run the following script using node --debug app.js and have node wait for the remote debug session to start. I think the app.js script is crashing before the debugger can make a connection. I'm using a tunnel to forward port 5858 to a vagrant box and I know that part is working as I have used the exact same setup successfully before.

Is this possible? The code is crashing at afterCheck(err,spam)) //spam is not defined and I want to figure out why.

var mysql      = require('mysql');
var connection = mysql.createConnection({
    host     : 'localhost',
    user     : 'root',
    password : '123',
    database : 'kommunity',
    debug: ['ComQueryPacket']
});

var akismet = require('akismet').client({ blog: 'deleted', apiKey: 'deleted' });

var selectPosts = "SELECT p.id as id, poster_ip, message, p.poster FROM topics  t\
                  LEFT JOIN posts p on t.first_post_id = p.id WHERE poster_ip != ''";

//var spam = false;

akismet.verifyKey(function(err, verified) {
    if(err) throw err;
    if (verified) {

        console.log('API key successfully verified.');
        connection.connect();

        connection.query(selectPosts, function(err, rows, fields) {
            if (err) throw err;
            var count = 0;
            rows.forEach( function(entry) {

            //console.log('foreach called with count '+count);
                count++;
                //console.log(entry['id']);

                akismet.checkSpam({
                    user_ip: entry['poster_ip'],
                    comment_author: entry['poster'],
                    comment_content: entry['message']

                    }, afterCheck(err,spam))

                });
        });

    }

    else {

        console.log('Unable to verify API key.');
    }

});

var afterDelete = function (err, rows, fields) {

    if (err) throw err;
    console.log('deleted topic '+rows[0]);
    console.log('spam');
    connection.end();

}

var afterCheck = function(err, spam, entry) {

    if(err) throw err;

console.log('after check called and spam is :'+spam);
    var deleteQuery = "DELETE FROM topics , posts  USING topics INNER JOIN posts \
                       WHERE topics.id=posts.topic_id AND topics.id ="
    if(spam) {
        console.log('spam');
        console.log('entry is ' + entry);
        connection.query(deleteQuery + entry.id + ';', afterDelete(err, rows, fields) );
        connection.end();

    } else {

        console.log('Not spam');

    }
}

Answer 1

From Webstorm Run/Debug Help. I know it because debug my nodejs apps in Webstorm.

With the --debug-brk option, the execution of the application suspends right after launch. This option allows you to debug the code executed on start.

With the --debug option, the code that has to be executed on the application start is executed whereupon the application waits for a debugger to connect to it. This option is useful when you are not going to debug Node.js right now, but you want to debug it later.

Update 2020-May

With node and npm versions --node 10.16.0 --npm 6.9.0, the --debug-brk option gives a deprecation warning.

(node:1601) [DEP0062] DeprecationWarning: `node --debug` and `node --debug-brk` are invalid. Please use `node --inspect` or `node --inspect-brk` instead.

We should use --inspect and --inspect-brk for this purpose.