[Bug] Intermittent debugger failures on Ballerina projects with Bal persist sources

[NipunaRanasinghe]

Description

The Ballerina debugger intermittently fails to show breakpoint hits when debugging Ballerina projects that include Bal persist sources.

As discussed in internal-support-ballerina/issues/803, we observed that this issue arises because the debugger relies on the Project API, which does not fully support scenarios involving changes related to Bal persist sources.

To address this, we need certain fixes (or possibly new APIs) from the Project API. Once these improvements are available, we plan to release the debugger-side fixes accordingly.

Steps to Reproduce

No response

Affected Version(s)

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OS, DB, other environment details and versions

No response

Related area

-> Debugger

Related issue(s) (optional)

#43537

Suggested label(s) (optional)

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Suggested assignee(s) (optional)

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[NipunaRanasinghe]

Please find the meeting notes from my discussion with @sameerajayasoma , @azinneera, and @gayaldassanayake on the above.

• We can consider using a different file extension for custom definition files (such as for persist and the upcoming service definitions feature) instead of .bal. New extension types (e.g., .baldef or .balspec) could help avoid unforeseen issues in the platform. This change would also resolve the debugger issue, as the debugger would no longer try to treat these files as standard Ballerina source files.

• Until we reach this solution, we’ll implement a temporary workaround by adding certain Project API utilities directly in the debugger.

[github-actions]

This issue is NOT closed with a proper Reason/ label. Make sure to add proper reason label before closing. Please add or leave a comment with the proper reason label now.

      - Reason/EngineeringMistake - The issue occurred due to a mistake made in the past.
      - Reason/Regression - The issue has introduced a regression.
      - Reason/MultipleComponentInteraction - Issue occured due to interactions in multiple components.
      - Reason/Complex - Issue occurred due to complex scenario.
      - Reason/Invalid - Issue is invalid.
      - Reason/Other - None of the above cases.