Working-With-An-External-Lua-Debugger

O3DE developers can choose which IDE to use when editing/debugging Lua scripts.

The default behavior of the Editor, when the user clicks the Open in Lua Editor( ) button of a Lua Script component is to open the Lua script with LuaIDE.

To override this default behavior, the user can define the registry key O3DE/Lua/Debugger/Uri with a URL representing an application capable of editing and debugging Lua scripts. For example, if you wish to use this Visual Studio Code debugger extension for Lua: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=lumbermixalot.o3de-lua-debug , you can do something like this in a *.setreg file:

{
    "O3DE": {
        "Lua": {
            "Debugger" : {
                "Uri": "vscode://lumbermixalot.o3de-lua-debug/debug?" 
            }
        }
    }
}

For developers of Lua Editor/Debuggers:

The Editor will execute the following URL Query as a system call to open a Lua script in an external debugger:

<App URI>?projectPath=<Game project path>&enginePath=<O3DE path>&files[]=<Lua Script path>

• <App URI>: The value of O3DE/Lua/Debugger/Uri, e.g. vscode://lumbermixalot.o3de-lua-debug/debug?.
• <Game project path>: Absolute path to the current game project, e.g. C:\GIT\MyGame.
• <O3DE path>: Absolute path to the root of O3DE, e.g. C:\GIT\o3de.
• <Lua Script path>: Absolute path to the Lua script that needs to be edited/debugged, e.g. C:\GIT\MyGame\Assets\score_counter.lua.