Is it possible to launch Chrome on host (symlinked with distrobox-host-exec) with VSCode inside distrobox?

[regunakyle]

I ran sudo ln -s /usr/bin/distrobox-host-exec /usr/local/bin/google-chrome in a Debian 12 distrobox, then I tried to launch Chrome (with VSCode debug config) and failed. VSCode showed a popup Unable to launch browser: "Unable to attach to browser".

VSCode can launch Chrome (or Chromium) installed inside the distrobox. Not sure what went wrong in the host symlink case.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install VSCode in a Debian/Fedora distrobox (Official guide)
2. Install Chrome on the host
3. Inside the distrobox container, run sudo ln -s /usr/bin/distrobox-host-exec /usr/local/bin/google-chrome
4. Open a random folder with VSCode inside distrobox container, create a .vscode folder, then create a launch.json inside with the following content:

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Launch Chrome",
      "request": "launch",
      "type": "chrome",
      "url": "http://localhost:5173",
      "webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
    }
  ]
}

5. Press F5 to launch Chrome (and fails)
6. Install Chrome or Chromium inside the distrobox container, then press F5 again (You need to add "runtimeExecutable": "/usr/bin/chromium" under webRoot in launch.json if you use Chromium). Now the browser is launched properly.