Set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable in VSCode debugger

Question

I'm testing Google Cloud Pub/Sub on my Django project using VSCode on my Mac, and I'm having some problems setting GCP environment variables during debugging tests, specifically the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable.

I am able to set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS for running server and/or tests locally with export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="path/to/json_credential_file.json" in a shell, but as the VSCode debugger runs in a separate shell the env variable is not set when debugging tests. I tried adding the same value to the env key in launch.json:

"env": {
    "GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS": "path/to/json_credential_file.json"
}

But it still complains about GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS not being set:

oauth2client.client.ApplicationDefaultCredentialsError: The Application Default Credentials are not available. They are available if running in Google Compute Engine. Otherwise, the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS must be defined pointing to a file defining the credentials. See https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/application-default-credentials for more information.

Any ideas?

user_4624877 · Answer

You can use launch configurations and set the "env" variable within the configuration specific to your programming language.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging#_launch-configurations

user_60114 · Answer

Here is an example

"env": {
        "GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS": "./secret.do.not.commit/serviceAccountTasks.privateKey.json"
      }

and here is the reference https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging#_launch-configurations

user_5313355 · Answer

in Powershell, run

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS", "path\serviceAccountTasks.privateKey.json", "User")

This will set then env variable for all processes

Set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable in VSCode debugger

3 Answers