This guide will walk you through how to setup Visual Studio Code for C++ Programming. You will be installing the followings:

• MS Visual Studio Code (the source code editor)
• C/C++ VS Code extension by Microsoft (for C/C++ IntelliSense, debugging, and code browsing). This extension is compulsory.
• Some other VS Code extensions, such as Colonize, Rainbow Bracket, etc). These are optional.
• MinGW (Compiling and debugging tools, i.e., gcc / g++ and gdb). Note that, it is pre-built with 32-bit version only. The pre-built compiler supports up to C++ 17.
• WinBGIm, a simple 2D graphic library.

Video

You can watch the video following this codelab on youtube. Click on this video link.

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

Download VS Code and run

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

• Launch VS Code
• Once you are in VS Code, hit CTRL P to open an input box on top of the window, and type:

  ext install ID
  

  where ID is the reference ID of the extension that you want to install.Example command: to install C/CPP extension

  ext install ms-vscode.cpptools
  

Extenstions to install

• C/C++ (Microsoft), ext-id: ms-vscode.cpptools
• Live Share (Microsoft) (for collaborative coding) ext-id: ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare
• Error Lens (Alexander) (Show error at coding-time) ext-id: usernamehw.errorlens
• Colonize (vmsynkov) (add semicolon) ext-id: vmsynkov.colonize
• Better Comments (aaron-bond) (comments with colors) ext-id: aaron-bond.better-comments

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

Download MingGW

• https://drive.google.com/file/d/14mEmxwes1sO4kzig7yqCG6ckRbD5zfZd

• Open the downlodaed zip file and extract the folder mingw (from the zip file) to c:\ drive

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

• Hit the Windows key on your keyboard to open the Windows Start menu.
• Type: Environment variable
• Choose from the Windows Start Menu: Edit the system environment variables
• Inside the window System Properties, click on the button Environment Variables.

• Inside the window Environment Variables, under the section System variables, double-click on the variable Path.

• Inside the window Edit environment variable, click on the button New to add a new path.Type:

  c:\mingw\bin
  

• Move the entry (c:\mingw\bin) to the top making it the first entry

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

• Download sample programs:
• Sample Programs
• Extract the zip file inside the folder c:\mingw. You should have the sample programs under the folder the folder: c:\mingw\vscode-cpp-samples
• Launch VS Code from the Start Menu
• In Windows Explorer, drag the folder single-file-programs into VS Code, (or right click the folder and click on the menu Open with VS Code)

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

When working with VS Code, you always want to work in a folder. You may have:

• a folder containing one or more programs. I call this type of program, single-file programs. That means, you write all your code in a single .cpp file for each program. To run such a program, use the Run and Debug: "Console Program" or "Graphic Program"
• a folder dedicated to a program. This configuration you want to use for your project. You structure your program in a folder and it contains all the .cpp, .hpp. To run this type of program, use the Run and Debug: "Multi-file Console Project" or "Multi-file Graphic Project"

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM

• Create a new folder (in Windiows File Explorer) . Let call this folder, program1.
• Copy vscode setting folder (i.e., .vscode ) from any of your existing project (for example from C:\mingw\vscode-cpp-samples\single-file-program ) to the new folder program1.
• Open the folder program1 into a VS Code instance.
• Now, you can proceed adding your source code files .cpp, etc.

Credit to Dr Jumail bin Taliba, lecturer from UTM