How can I use PyCharm to locally debug a Celery worker?

Question

I have an existing Django project with a virtualenv. After activating the venv, I can run Celery just with the command celery. This works on Windows, OS X and Linux.

I wanted to try PyCharm on Windows, and I'm able to get it to run my Django server (using the project's venv), but I also want to run Celery, so I can debug that as well.

I can't find a simple, straightforward guide to setting up PyCharm so I can debug Celery (in a manner will work with PyCharm on any platform).

Solution

This is what I do to run celery

Go to Edit Configuration, then select the '+' icon to add new Python script and enter the celery path, other parameters and working directory. You can specify environment variables and bottom of that you have the option to select parent environment to include as well. Also, don't forget to choose your python interpreter for taking care of virtual environment.

Comments

[Ícaro]

If you are using virtualenv, you might want to change the Script path to point to your env's location, like so: env/bin/celery

[phobic]

I noticed that this does not work with CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER = True, as it does not stop on break points. Try setting it to False instead, which should be the default anyway.

[Hrishabh Gupta]

@phobic it is not needed to set always_eager=True, you run the script in debug mode, it will work.

[Jonathan Geisler]

This works on Linux, but last I've tried this doesn't work on Windows (as OP requested). The standalone celery command is a batch file there, so PyCharm cannot attach the Python debugger to it.

[Jonathan Geisler]

I've outlined a workaround for Celery 3.x on Windows here: stackoverflow.com/a/48868014/6278

[Jorge Arévalo]

I run it with the same configuration. This should be marked as the right response.

[frenzy]

For Celery 4.x and better Celery 3.x solution see this stackoverflow.com/a/57817731/4474576

[user142295]

This is not working for me. I use Celery 5.x on Linux-5.4.0-42-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.10. I set up the project as described, then run the abovementioned config in debug mode. The code stops at my breakpoint (at least pycharm makes me think it did; in debug window, I have Debugger and Console tabs, and the breakpoint line becomes blue in the background). And then it hangs. In Console, I cannot print anything, in debugger, nothing is shown, and I cannot advance the code (at least, not by any means known to me).

[yyunikov]

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