Scrapy debugging in VSCode made easy.

debug_runner.py

from scrapy.cmdline import execute

try:
    execute(
        [
            'scrapy',
            'crawl',
            'spidername',
            # '-a',
            # 'some_attr=some_value
            # '-s',
            # 'HTTPCACHE_ENABLED=true',  # This can be uncommented for caching
            # '-o',
            # 'out.csv',
        ]
    )
except SystemExit:
    pass

launch.json

{
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Python: debug_runner.py",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/debug_runner.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal"
        }
    ]
}