Visual Studio Code C

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First written on 2020-09-11.
Last updated on 2021-01-02.

One time: install a C/C complier, add to PATH environment variable install C/C plugin for visual studio code tell visual studio code where the compiler is and what is the short cut to build and run these are files under '.vscode' (see below) every project: crate a project build project run project.

In this article and several more, I will be discussing developing a very simple C++ library and application using CMake and Visual Studio Code. I will also use git and Google Test, and port the project from Windows to Linux. Most of the information is applicable to using almost any IDE, or indeed, no IDE at all.

  1. The Visual Studio Code Editor must be installed in the system. Download the C/C Extension. It is an extension provided by Microsoft that support visual studio code. It helps in IntelliSence, debugging and code browsing of the programming code in the visual studio.
  2. First written on 2020-09-11.Last updated on 2021-01-02. In this article and several more, I will be discussing developing a very simple C library and application using CMake and Visual Studio Code. I will also use git and Google Test, and port the project from Windows to Linux. Most of the information is applicable to using.

Why Use CMake?

CMake is a powerful and robust build system. You specify what you want done, not how to do it. CMake then takes that information and generates the files needed to build the system. For example, CMake can generate solution (.sln) and project files (.vcxproj) that Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code use on Windows. Similar capabilities are available for every other popular IDE. It can even create make files if you want to do everything from the command line. Because it can be called from the command line, it integrates well with continuous integration/continuous build systems.

You can specify the build tools that you want to use; for example, you can use MSVC or LLVM on Windows, and gnu or LLVM on Unix-like systems, including Linux, OSX, and MSYS or MinGW. Aside from specifying the tools to use, no other changes are required to the CMake specification files. You will see this when I port my project from Windows using the Visual Studio build tools to Linux using the gnu build tools.

With CMake, you can download, build, and use a large number of tools. I will show one example of this when I use Google Test in this project. Just about any tool that can be downloaded from the internet, and which provides CMake files for building, can be used.

Installing the Needed Tools

I will start the project on Windows using VS Code and the Visual Studio Build Tools, but if you wish, you can start with a different IDE, or even a different operating system. In a later article, I will discuss using the gnu tools on Linux (Ubuntu).

So let’s begin.

Installing Visual Studio Code and Extensions

On Windows, the latest version of Visual Studio Code is available on its download page. Select the appropriate version; click on the Windows button for the x64 version, or one of the ARM links for ARM if that is applicable to you. The download will begin. When it is completed, run the downloaded file.

Next, we need two VSCode extensions. Start VS Code and display the extensions panel (select View → Extensions from the main menu). In the search box, enter C++. A number of C and C++ extensions are displayed. You want the one called C++. Make sure it is from Microsoft. This extension provides Intellisense, debugging, and browsing capabilities. Click on the Install button to install it.

The second extension is CMake Tools. Search for and install it.

Installing Visual Studio Build Tools

We need the build tools provided by Visual Studio. Don’t worry, we aren’t installing Visual Studio, just the build tools.

On the Visual Studio downloads page, move down into the All Downloads section. As I write this, the current version of Visual Studio is 2019, so I will be referring to it in this section. If a later version is available, use that instead. Select Tools for Visual Studio 2019. Click on the Download button for Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019. Download and save the file. When the download has completed, open the file. This starts Visual Studio Installer. Again, don’t worry, we are not installing Visual Studio, just the build tools. When the installer window opens select only the build tools. After some time (several minutes), the install will complete. Close the installer.

Open the Windows Start menu and start Developer Command Prompt for VS 2019; do not open the standard command prompt or Powershell. At the command prompt, enter:

The following should be displayed, although the version number may be different:

If the message says that it cannot find CMake, then the build tools did not install correctly.

You will almost always be starting VS Code from the command line of Developer Command Prompt, so you will probably want to add it to the Productivity section of the Start menu.

Installing Git

We will need git. If you have done any development work, you probably already have it installed. If not, Git for Windows is available here.

Code

A Simple C++ Program With Library

We will start by creating a simple C++ program with a simple library. You can perform similar steps, with slight modifications, if you are on Linux or any other Unix-like system. To support the program, we will create a directory structure and start VS Code as follows:

Open a Developer Command Prompt. Enter:

In the Explorer list in VS Code, select the hello/include directory and create a new file called hello.h. Place the following code in that file and save it:

Again in the Explorer list, select hello/src and create a new file called hello.cpp. Place the following code in that file and save it:

Visual Studio Code Comment Shortcut

That is all the code we need for our library. Now create the program to use the library. In the Explorer list, select the apps directory and create a new file called main.cpp. Place the following code in that file and save it:

To build the library and program, we will use CMake. There are many examples of CMake on the internet, many of which are outdated or just plain bad. For this program and library, I am following Modern CMake by Henry Schreiner and others.

In the Explorer list, select VSCODE-CMAKE-HELLO in VS Code and create a new file. Call it CMakeLists.txt. Enter the following and save the file:

In the Explorer list, select apps and create a new file. Call it CMakeLists.txt. Enter the following and save the file:

Create a file called CMakeLists.txt in the hello directory and place the following code in it:

Using CMake With Visual Studio Code

Look at the status bar on the VS Code window. If it looks similar to this:

then terminate and restart VS Code. The status bar should now look like this:

From left to right, master* indicates that you are editing the git master branch and that changes have been made. The symbols and 0s indicate that there are currently no errors in workspace. Next is a button that will run CMake (CMake: [Debug]). No Kit Selected indicates that the build tools have not yet been selected; we will get to them in a moment. Following that is a Build button, the default target, a bug button that will run the application in debug mode, and a button that will run the application without starting the debugger. The remainder of the status bar provides other information that we are not currently concerned with.

We first have to run CMake to create the build files. Click on the CMake: [Debug] button. The first time you do so, a list of build tool kits is displayed below the main menu. Select either Unspecified, or Visual Studio Build Tools 2019 Release - amd64. The No Kit Selected text in the status bar will change to [Visual Studio Build Tools 2019 Release - amd64], and a list of CMake configurations are displayed: Debug, Release, MinSizeRel, and RelWithDebInfo.

Select Debug. This will execute CMake and generate a Visual Studio solution file (.sln) and Visual Studio project files (.vcxproj) if there are no errors. If there are errors, then something is not right with the CMakeLists.txt files or the C++ source files.

If you selected any of the other CMake actions, the executable, library, and debug related files would be placed in other subdirectories. For example, if you build release versions, they will be placed in build/Release.

The first time you run debugging by either clicking on the Bug button, or by selecting Run → Start Debugging, a list of build environments will be displayed just below the main menu. Select C++ (Windows).

To do a clean and rebuild, all we have to do is delete the build directory and all of its contents, then run CMake and Build.

Debugging

After a debug build, you can debug main.exe by clicking on the bug button in the status bar. Alternatively, you can select Run → Start Debugging from the main menu. In the latter case, the first time you do this, a list of debug environments is displayed. Select C++ (Windows). If the active file in VS Code is a C++ source file, a list of configurations is then displayed. You can select either cl.exe - Build and debug active file or Default configuration. If a different type of file is active, such as CMakeLists.txt, then the configuration list is not displayed.

In either case, a file called launch.json is added to the .vscode directory. Open that file and change the program to ${workspaceFolder}/build/apps/Debug/main.exe

Now you can run debug from either the bug button or the menu item.

Summary and What’s Next

This article discussed how to create a C++ project containing a program called main and a library called hello with Visual Studio Code using CMake. How to debug the program is also discussed.

There is still much to do, but that will be discussed in the following articles:

  • Adding GoogleTest to the project.

UPDATES

The code in hello.cpp was updated to correct a typo. Thanks Vlad T. for pointing that out.

PS: This was published on my Blog here.

C++ is a statically-typed, free-form, (usually) compiled, multi-paradigm, intermediate-level general-purpose middle-level programming language.

In simple terms, C++ is a sophisticated, efficient, general-purpose programming language based on C.

It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979.

One of C++'s main features is the compiler. This is used to compile and run C++ code.

A compiler is a special program that processes statements written in a particular programming language like C++ and turns them into machine language or 'code' that a computer's processor uses.

I actually wrote this article because I had a C++ assignment which required using a compiler. As usual, everyone was using the CodeBlocks IDE and Visual Studio IDE. But I was already used to Visual Studio Code for all my programming stuff.

Visual Studio Code Command Line

I then set out to find a way of compiling C++ directly inside my own VsCode Editor, hence this article :).

In this article, I'll show you how to set up your compiler in VsCode and give you some links to some of the best C++ resources.

  • Prior knowledge of C++
    (I assume you're learning C++, about to start learning, or just reading this for fun. This article is not a C++ 101 tutorial – some understanding of C++ is needed.)
  • Visual Studio Code Editor
    Download here and read the setup docs for Windows, Linux and Mac
  • Internet connection (!important)

Disclaimer!

I will be using a Windows OS throughout this article, but I'll provide links to resources that will help those using other operating systems.

Now let's get started!

  • Head to www.mingw.org and click the “Download/Installer” link to download the MinGW setup file, or click here for Windows, here for Linux, and here for Mac
MinGW, a contraction of 'Minimalist GNU for Windows', is a minimalist development environment for native Microsoft Windows applications.
  • After downloading, install MinGW and wait for the “MinGW Installation Manager” to show up.
  • When the “MinGW Installation Manager” shows up, click on mingw32-gcc-g++ then select “Mark for Installation”
  • In the menu at the top left corner, click on “Installation > Apply Changes”
  • Wait and allow to install completely. Ensure you have a stable internet connection during this process.

PATH is an environment variable on Unix-like operating systems, DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, specifying a set of directories where executable programs are located. In general, each executing process or user session has its own PATH setting. - Wikipedia

After installing MinGW, it can be found in C:MinGWbin. Now you have to include this directory in your environment variable PATH. If you've been using computers for a while now you should know how to do this already, but if you don't, here are a few resources:

  • Click here for a Windows OS guide
  • Click here for Linux
  • Click here for a Mac OS guide

Now we have our compiler set up, let's install Code Runner

Code Runner allows you to Run code snippet or code file for multiple languages:

C, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Perl, Perl 6, Ruby, Go, Lua, Groovy, PowerShell, BAT/CMD, BASH/SH, F# Script, F# (.NET Core), C# Script, C# (.NET Core), VBScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, Scala, Swift, Julia, Crystal, OCaml Script, R, AppleScript, Elixir, Visual Basic .NET, Clojure, Haxe, Objective-C, Rust, Racket, AutoHotkey, AutoIt, Kotlin, Dart, Free Pascal, Haskell, Nim, D, Lisp, Kit, and custom command.
  • Click here to download
  • Or search in VsCode marketplace tab
  • After installing restart VsCode
  • Open your C++ file in Vscode. Here's a basic hello world program below:

Save this file as test.cpp

  • Use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+N
  • Or press F1 and then select/type Run Code
  • Or right-click the Text Editor and then click Run Code in the editor context menu

The code will run and the output will be shown in the Output Window. Open the output window with `Ctrl+ shortcut.

  • Use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+M
  • Or press F1 and then select/type Stop Code Run
  • Or right-click the Output Channel and then click Stop Code Run in the context menu

Hurray, you just successfully set up your C++ environment in VsCode!

Here's a quick hint: By default, VsCode's output terminal is read-only. If you're running code that requires user input like:

you won't be able to type into the terminal, Cannot edit in read-only terminal.
To fix this, you need to manually enable read-write.

Visual Studio Code Collapse All Code

  • In VsCode, Go to File > Preference > Setting.
  • In the User tab on the left panel, find the extensions section
  • Scroll and find 'Run Code Configuration'
  • Scroll and find a checkbox Run in Terminal (Whether to run code in Integrated Terminal) Check the box.

OR

Visual Studio Code Compare And Merge Files

  • In your setting.json file, add:

Hurray, you're done and ready to roll :).

Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. Redefined

Here are some C++ resources you can use to get started with learning C++

  • Code Runner by Jun Han

Visual Studio Code Compiler

Thank you for reading!