C++ Team Blog

The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team

Visual Studio Code CMake Tools Extension 1.17 Update: CMake Presets v6, Overriding Cache Variables, and Side Bar Updates

The February release of the CMake Tools extension in VS Code is now available. With this release, we have three major new updates to the extension, including some of our highly upvoted requests: To view the full list of updates with this release, please look at our CHANGELOG. This release features 2 contributions from our open...

Azure Networking Team reaches peak productivity with Visual Studio’s new remote Linux capabilities and improvements

Over the past couple of months, the Microsoft C++ team reached out to a series of customers voting on a suggestion ticket asking for Remote Linux Unit Testing support to better understand their full set of interactions and needs with CMake and Remote Linux scenarios in Visual Studio. After these discussions, we built out a backlog of work ...

Debug vcpkg portfiles in CMake script mode with Visual Studio Code

We recently announced support for debugging the CMake language using the VS Code CMake Tools extension. Now in version 1.16 of the extension, you can fine-tune the debugger configuration using a launch.json file. This enables debugging in CMake script mode in addition to the existing debugging of CMake project generation.  CMake script ...

Visual Studio Code CMake Tools Extension 1.16 Update: New CMake Tools Sidebar and CMake Debugging options

The November release of the CMake Tools extension in VS Code is now available. With this release, we have two major new updates to the extension:  The full list of updates can be seen in our change log. This release features 10 contributions from the open-source community. Thank you all for your continued support!  Release ...

Enhancing the CMake Targets View in Visual Studio

The CMake Targets View in Visual Studio is a view that allows you to visualize your CMake project structure by the CMake targets and build specified target libraries and executables. To make this view more usable, we have implemented a few new improvements to make it easier than ever to navigate your CMake targets. This includes improved ...

Introducing CMake Debugger in VS Code: Debug your CMake Scripts using Open-Source CMake Debugger

The new CMake Debugger that was introduced in Visual Studio is now available in VS Code. Now, you can debug your CMakeLists.txt scripts from VS Code using the CMake Tools Extension. To see the full release notes for this release and what else is included, including bug fixes, please see the release notes. Background The Visual C++ team ...

Automatically Install Windows Subsystem for Linux from Visual Studio using New Seamless Integration

Have you ever wanted to try using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to target Linux from your C++ project, but haven’t gone through the documentation or CLI installation process? Now, from Visual Studio with the Linux and Embedded Workload, Visual Studio makes it easier than ever to get to that one-click install of WSL. Download the latest ...

CMake debugger allows you to debug your CMake scripts and more

The VS CMake team has been working in close collaboration with Kitware on developing a debugger for CMake scripts in the Visual Studio IDE (see this open Kitware issue for more details). We will be contributing this work back upstream (targeting the 3.27 release) so that the developer community can have it and work to improve it together, by ...

What’s New in CMake for VS Code

The latest version of CMake tools is now available for download in the VS Code Marketplace or using the .vsix file. We have been working hard on improving the CMake experience and are excited to share some new features and improvements for users starting in version 1.11.  ‘CMake’ task provider updates  We have added more options to the...