Debugging a shell application is theoretically same as debugging any other jvm process, however the shell part of it will complicate things as IDE’s have different type of support running a proper command-line applications.

• VSCode probably has a best support as you can directly start a shell in a debug mode directly within IDE.

• STS/Eclipse contains some sort of a support running a shell but it’s implementation is missing most of a modern shell capabilities.

• IDEA is currently probably a worst one as in a debug mode it seems to connect directly to jvm input/output streams and fully misses shell capabilities.

If you’re unable to directly launch shell application in a debug mode within IDE, one workaround is to use your favourite shell and start jvm process with a debug mode:

And then connect your IDE to it as an external debug target.

Your IDE compiler may not use flag to preserve method argument names which then breaks commands where option is resolved an actual argument name. With vscode you may need to i.e. set java.settings.url to custom prefs file having something like:

Ref https://github.com/redhat-developer/vscode-java/issues/2304