Visual Studio Code - C++ Debugger doesn't start - c++

Question

I've been using Visual Studio Code to debug C++ on Linux for a while now.
In a sample project I've got the following launch.json:
{
"name": "(gdb) Launch",
"type": "cppdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/main",
"args": [],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
"environment": [],
"externalConsole": true,
"MIMode": "gdb",
"setupCommands": [
{
"description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
"text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
"ignoreFailures": true
}
]
}
I've successfully compiled and run main.c, so debugging should work fine.
When I start the debugger, a blue loading bar appears under the arrow and nothing happens. On my laptop, with the exact same configuration, the loading bar would disappear after a couple of seconds and the debugger would start.
Looking at ps aux I can see two new processes:
mono.linux-x86_640 with the command /home/guyyst/.vscode/extensions/ms-vscode.cpptools-0.20.1/debugAdapters/mono.linux-x86_64 --config /home/guyyst/.vscode/extensions/ms-vscode.cpptools-0.20.1/debugAdapters/framework/config.linux /home/guyyst/.vscode/extensions/ms-vscode.cpptools-0.20.1/debugAdapters/bin/OpenDebugAD7.exe
bash with the command bash /home/guyyst/.vscode/extensions/ms-vscode.cpptools-0.20.1/debugAdapters/OpenDebugAD7
Debugging on my laptop spawns the same processes, but they disappear when the debugging actually starts. The two processes on my PC stick around even after closing VSCode. When I first noticed this I had 15+ copies running from previous attempts.
All of this worked fine yesterday, and I don't remember making any changes to my configuration since then.
I've tried reinstalling VSCode several times through either the AUR version visual-studio-code-bin or the open source package code.
Debugging some Python code worked just fine.

Answer 1

Turns out it was as easy as setting externalConsole in launch.json to false. Should've probably thought of trying that before.
I'm constrained to the VSCode console, which isn't that big a deal.
I still can't explain why it won't work with an external console, since that's how I'm still doing it on my laptop and used to do it on my PC too.