How to debug and develop Azure DevOps extension without deployment?

Question

I want to develop a simple Azure DevOps extension which displays some data in the table. My extension is based on extension sample.

Can I debug this extension outside Azure DevOps without the complete deployment process described here? As a complete newbie to Azure DevOps I cannot imagine my development cycle when I should deploy every single change. Or can be deployment automated somehow?

Answer 1

You can use the Azure DevOps Extension Hot Reload and Debug.

Download and install the following tools:

• Visual Studio Code
• Firefox (because the VS Code Debugger for Chrome extension doesn't support iframes yet)
• The Debugger for Firefox VS Code extension
• The tfx-cli npm package
• The webpack npm package
• The webpack-dev-server npm package

In the above GitHub repo, you can find the full tutorial of how to debug the extension without deploying it. another tutorial also available here.