The preLaunchTask 'build' terminated with exit code -2.

[WellspringCS]

In VSCode (not Insiders) I am seeing this error in a dialog box when hitting F5 to compile in Ubuntu:

The preLaunchTask 'build' terminated with exit code -2.

In the terminal window itself, this error is reported:

The terminal shell path "dotnet" is a directory

Version: 1.37.1
Commit: f06011a
Date: 2019-08-15T16:17:25.463Z
Electron: 4.2.7
Chrome: 69.0.3497.128
Node.js: 10.11.0
V8: 6.9.427.31-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 4.15.0-58-generic

This error is new, happens on all projects on this machine, and the errors began after installing updates.

BUT PLEASE NOTE: I have been aware that my dotnet folder is itself named dotnet -- not the (standard, I believe?) name .dotnet with a leading period. This is unorthodox, and due to the error message I was seeing, I decided now was a good time to align my machine with the norm. I renamed my folder to .dotnet and adjusted as necessary stuff in my .bashrc file.

Rebooted, and error is gone.

That said, I do think this is a bug in the latest version of VSCode. In older versions I did not have this problem.

[isidorn]

Sounds like it is caused by the C# extension, though assigning to @alexr00 so she can decide.

[alexr00]

@WellspringCS Can you paste in your build task?

[WellspringCS]

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "build",
            "command": "dotnet",
            "type": "process",
            "args": [
                "build",
                "${workspaceFolder}"
            ],
            "problemMatcher": "$tsc"
        },
     ...

Does that cover it for you, @alexr00 ? As I said, the bug is now history for me, as I renamed my dotnet folder, so no urgency on my part on this anymore.

I assume I could reproduce the error if I renamed my dotnet folder back to:
/home/[user]/dotnet
from
/home/[user]/.dotnet

[alexr00]

Since tasks run with bash -c your .bashrc won't be sourced. I'm guessing that somewhere dotnet was being added to your environment, but .dotnet was not. Since we don't have repro anymore. I'm going to close this bug.

[WellspringCS]

@alexr00 that sounds right. You''ll note in my original post that I made adjustments accordingly in my .bashrc file when switching to the standard dotnet folder.

I wonder what's changed, since my non-standard dotnet folder setup did work in the past, and I also wonder how any non-standard paths would then work in the current environment, if the user's .bashrc file is not sourced.

[nzain]

@alexr00 Just stumbled into this issue on Ubuntu 18.4.3 and VS Code 1.38.1 because the recommended installation path (from dotnet core download page) is $HOME/dotnet which works fine from the terminal, but gives the above error in vs code.

Renaming my folder to dotnet3.0 resolved this issue. Since the default recommendation leads directly into this, please consider to fix it.

[nzain]

just to add, I made dotnet visible via

ln -s ~/dotnet/dotnet ~/.local/bin/dotnet

using the fact that ~/.profile will add my local bin folder to the path on login by default.