ryupold / vscode-cpp-project-setup

Boilerplate setup to start developing a simple C++ application/library with VS Code

vscode-cpp-project-setup

Boilerplate setup to start developing a simple C++ application/library with VS Code.

I use the C++17 standart in this setup. utilizing the GCC compiler.

This setup has 2 build modes:

• executable (hello.exe -> Windows | ./hello -> Linux & macOS )
  • compile using make build-exe
• library (libhello.dll -> Windows | libhello.so -> Linux | libhello.dylib -> macOS)
  • compile using make build-lib

Both versions compile to a native binary for the current OS. You can find the resulting binaries in the ./bin folder.

after the build you can run make clean-obj to remove all debug files in the ./bin folder if you don't need them anymore for debugging.

Prerequisites

VS Code

The only thing you need to do in VSCode is to install the C/C++ extension from Microsoft.

Windows

On Windows I prefer the MSYS2/MinGW toolchain:

• I assume you are working on a 64 bit machine
• install MSYS2 https://github.com/orlp/dev-on-windows/wiki/Installing-GCC--&-MSYS2
• for this setup I assume you installed the x86_64 version in: C:\msys64\
• start C:\msys64\mingw64.exe
• This opens a terminal were you do the following:
  • enter pacman -Syuu to install the initial updates
  • after the command has finished close the terminal and reopen it
  • enter pacman -Syuu again to install the remaining updates
  • now install MinGW (64 bit) by entering pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake
  • This takes a while, after the setup is complete there should be files in the previously empty folder C:\msys64\mingw64\bin
  • What you see here are the GNU common build tools like g++, gcc, make etc. ported for Windows
  • IMPORTANT: add C:\msys64\mingw64\bin to your PATH
  • The setup was successfully when you open the powershell, enter gcc and see something like: gcc: fatal error: no input files...

macOS

• Ensure Xcode is installed
• Install command line tools by opening Terminal and enter: xcode-select --install
• Restart
• You should now be able to start/debug this example program in VSCode

Linux

• todo: not tested yet but theoretically it should work :)

Debug

To debug your code you can set breakpoints and press F5 (CTRL+SHIFT+P -> Debug: Start Debugging)