External I/O Consoles
In cases where a debug process launched from Wing requires specific characteristics provided by a full-featured terminal emulator or Windows console, or to better handle very large amounts of debug process output, you can redirect debug I/O to a new external window using the Debugger > I/O > Use External Console preference.
The most effective way to keep the external console visible after the debug process exits is to place a breakpoint on the last line of your code. Alternatively, enable the Debugger > I/O > External Console Waits on Exit preference. However, this can result in many external consoles being displayed at once if you do not press Enter inside the consoles after each debug run.
On Linux and macOS it is possible to select which console applications will be tried for the external console by altering the Debugger > I/O > External Consoles preference.
On Windows, Wing always uses the standard DOS Console that comes with your version of Windows.
Environment Limitations
Depending on the terminal implementation used, environment variables set by Wing may not be inherited by the Python process that runs within the external console. This breaks virtualenv, Anaconda environments, and any other case where the configured environment is needed for code to be able to run.
An easy work-around for virtualenv is to selected the Command Line option for Python Executable in Project Properties or the launch configuration. Then enter the full path of the virtualenv's Python. This is the value of sys.executable (after import sys) in the desired virtualenv.
To work around this in other cases, create a launch script that sets up your environment and then starts Python with all arguments that were passed to the script. Then set this script as the Command Line in your Python Executable in Project Properties or your launch configuration.
For example on Windows:
@echo off set MYENV=value call C:\path\to\envsetup.bat C:\path\to\python.exe %*
Or on macOS and Linux:
#!/usr/bin/env bash export MYENV=value . /path/to/envsetup.sh /path/to/python "$@"
Both examples show setting MYENV within the script and calling an external environment setup script envsetup. Either may be used as a way to provide the environment to the invoked Python.
