Cannot find runtime ‘node’ on PATH. Is ‘node’ installed?

On my current Windows box, I have Node.js installed only in WSL – not on Windows itself.

When debugging a Node.js application from within a Visual Studio Code instance started from WSL, you may receive the following message:

Cannot find runtime 'node' on PATH. Is 'node' installed?
Cannot find runtime ‘node’ on PATH. Is ‘node’ installed?

While the dev experience certainly could be better, the solution is quite simple: Click on the “Open launch.json” button and add a configuration for “useWSL” with the value set to “true”.

{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"type": "node",
"request": "launch",
"name": "Launch Program",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}\\entry-point.js",
"useWSL": true
}
]
}
view raw launch.json hosted with ❤ by GitHub