C++ Team Blog

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

Using system package manager dependencies with vcpkg

According to C++ 2022 developer survey, the top 3 ways to manage C++ libraries were having the library source code as part of the build, compiling the library separately from instructions, and acquiring the library from a system package manager. Language package managers, such as vcpkg, simplify library management by offering the ease of use ...

vcpkg Environment Activation in Visual Studio

In Visual Studio 2022 17.4 vcpkg environments will now automatically activate. A vcpkg environment is described by a manifest that captures the artifacts necessary for building your application (learn more about vcpkg artifacts). Today the vcpkg artifact experience is focused on embedded developers, but we will be expanding this in time to all...

Importing ST projects into Visual Studio Code

In the world of Arm microcontrollers there are many silicon vendors, one of the largest is STMicroelectronics. ST has a large catalog of available devices with many capabilities as well as supporting development boards for evaluating them. They also produce STM32CubeIDE, a custom IDE to use when targeting their devices, and STM32CubeMX, a ...

Bootstrap your dev environment with vcpkg artifacts

Updated May 11, 2022: Using your own registry section revised to reflect metadata format changes. We are happy to announce a new experience for acquiring artifacts using vcpkg. We define an artifact as a set of packages required for a working development environment. Examples of relevant packages include compilers, linkers, debuggers, build...

C++ Cross-Platform Development with Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3: vcpkg, CMake configuration, remote headers, and WSL

In Visual Studio 2019 you can target both Windows and Linux from the comfort of a single IDE. Visual Studio’s native support for CMake lets you open any folder containing C++ code and a CMakeLists.txt file directly in Visual Studio to edit, build, and debug your CMake project on Windows, Linux, and the Windows Subsystem for ...

Using multi-stage containers for C++ development

Updated January 10, 2020: Corrected link to article source that was broken by refactoring in the repo. Containers are a great tool for configuring reproducible build environments. It’s fairly easy to find Dockerfiles that provide various C++ environments. Unfortunately, it is hard to find guidance on how to use newer techniques like multi...

Use the official Boost.Hana with MSVC 2017 Update 8 compiler

We would like to share a progress update to our previous announcement regarding enabling Boost.Hana with MSVC compiler. Just as a quick background, Louis Dionne, the Boost.Hana author, and us have jointly agreed to provide a version of Boost.Hana in vcpkg to promote usage of the library among more C++ users from the Visual C++ community. We've...