Visual Studio Code as a C++ Development Environment

Overview

With enough time spent on setup and configuration, VSCode can work well as an IDE for C++ projects. VSCode's flexible configuration model makes is straightfoward to work with.

These are some notes on one way of getting set up.

Baseline

Assuming the official C/C++ VSCode extension is installed, we first need to set the default include path in the global settings.json. If there are libraries on disk used frequently enough to warrant being visible to all projects (whether they're linked or not), this is the place to list them:

"C_Cpp.default.includePath": ["path-one", "path-two"]

For every C++ project worked on, we'll also want to create a workspace .vscode/c_cpp_properties.json to store project specific configuration details such as the intellisenseMode, includePath, compilerPath and cppStandard.

Each project's c_cpp_properties.json should include the default includePath defined in settings.json. This way, the default path will be searched in addition to any project specific paths. Also ensure that the c_cpp_properties.json configuration aligns perfectly with whatever tooling is being used for the project. The intellisenseMode needs to be spot on, else VSCode may give misdirected warnings about missing headers.

Intellisense

It's important to keep in mind that configuration defined in c_cpp_properties.json only impacts intellisense for the project in which it is included. By setting a default C/C++ includePath in a workspace or global settings.json, and setting an includePath in a project specific c_cpp_properties.json that points to this default, all we are doing is making VSCode's intellisense aware of the existence of these default headers for that specific project.

If the includePath entries in these configuration files were omitted, VSCode would have no way to enforce intellisense in any meaningful sense. In this case, warnings about missing symbols might get thrown, but projects may still compile. This is because most compilers perform their own predefined searches for headers during compilation.

Ultimately, the process of setting a sensible includePath for C++ projects is to align VSCode's intellisense header search as closely as possible with the underlying compiler search, so that symbol resolution reflects what the compiler will be able to find.

Similarly, to get the compiler to find external libraries when linking, set up a .vscode/tasks.json with an appropriately matching includePath entry, or do away with task based header resolution and use a dedicated build system such as CMake.

Integrating external tooling

VSCode allows users to integrate external tooling common to C++ development exactly as it does with any other language. A means to call compilers, linters and formatters is provided through the tasks.json configuration file. Here you can define commands that run anything you otherwise would from a terminal, all without leaving the editor window.

For a rundown of what can be done using tasks in VSCode, the documentation gives a detailed overview.