I created a new environment, starting with cloning py4web, opening it as a vscode workspace, creating a venv, running make assets and py4web setup apps.
As an aside I noticed that the launch.json distributed needs to be changed from type: "python" to type: "debugpy".
With the debugger in note that we reached _dashboard/__init__.py line 515 "roots = list(... but did not reach the next statement at line 524?
I also tried to restore my existing environment. git pull confirms I have the latest repo. I checked out an earlier release and then the current master, so nothing should be missing or out of date in the workspace. Then ran make assets, deleted the _dashboard folder, ran py4web setup apps. It seems that this partially installs _dashboard: _dashboard.utils is missing?