C++ Team Blog
The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team
Latest posts
Microsoft Office team uses Remote MacOS Debugging Capability in Visual Studio
The Microsoft Office team approached the C++ team after seeing the Visual Studio announcement for support for debugging applications running on C++ from Windows through the Blizzard blog post. They had a need for a similar workflow, but for Macs instead of Linux. The C++ team worked closely with the Office engineers to adapt the same underlying technology for Mac.  The following blog post is written in conjunction with Anthony Penniston, an Office engineer we worked closely with to deliver this capability. Thank you, Anthony, for working with us! What does this team do? Anthony’s team in Office works on...
Improving Copy and Move Elision
With Visual Studio 2022 version 17.4 Preview 3, we've significantly increased the number of situations where we do copy or move elision and given users more control over whether these transformations are enabled. What are copy and move elision? When a keyword in a C++ function is followed by an expression of non-primitive type, the execution of that return statement copies the result of the expression into the return slot of the calling function. To do this, the copy or move constructor of the non-primitive type is called. Then, as part of exiting the function, destructors for function-local variables are call...
vcpkg September 2022 Release is Now Available: Celebrating 6 Years with Over 2000 Libraries!
The September 2022 release of the vcpkg package manager is available. This blog post summarizes changes from August 15th, 2022 to September 27th, 2022 for the Microsoft/vcpkg and Microsoft/vcpkg-tool GitHub repos. vcpkg now has over 2,000 unique libraries in its open-source registry With this release, and the 6th anniversary of the launch of vcpkg, we are proud to hit a new milestone: over 2,000 unique open-source libraries are available in the vcpkg catalog! vcpkg continues to maintain the largest catalog of any C/C++ package manager with over 10,000 unique library versions with built-in support for ...
Announcing NuGet PackageReference support for C++/CLI MSBuild projects targeting .NET Core and .NET 5 or higher
One of the new features for C++ developers in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.3 is NuGet PackageReference support for C++/CLI MSBuild projects that target .NET Core and .NET 5 or higher. More specifically, this impacts CLR Class Library (.NET) and CLR Empty Project (.NET) project templates. This functionality allows you to manage NuGet packages while bringing the benefits of PackageReference support to your dependencies. This feature is on by default for new projects. To enable this feature for your existing projects, add the following property to your project file: In most cases, you will want to enable...
Using system package manager dependencies with vcpkg
According to the 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 of a system package manager with the power, flexibility, and portability of building from source. vcpkg brings several advantages to C++ library management. First, vcpkg supports a wide range of customizations for each library. vcpkg installs libraries with a specific ...
A Visual Studio Debugger Extension for the Raspberry Pi Camera
While developing a sample application for a Raspberry Pi with a camera using the RaspiCam library, it occurred to me that it would be convenient and fun to be able to see the current camera input while debugging the application. Â The Visual Studio debugger supports type-specific custom visualizers and end-user extensions that implement UI for these visualizers. I decided to make one for the RaspiCam camera types that would display the current image from the camera. The image below is the end result, showing Visual Studio debugging a program running on the Raspberry Pi and displaying the content of a Raspberry Pi ...
Microsoft C++ Code Analysis Warnings with Key Events
Introduction To make your C++ coding experience as safe as possible, the Microsoft C++ Code Analysis has added new checks and improved existing ones to help you prevent bugs before they find their way into your products. Some of the checks work harder than others, analyzing the code deeper by simulating runtime behavior. As such, they can find defects that are harder to find through syntactic checks alone or through data flow analysis. It is natural that developers find it harder to find the root causes for some of these more complex warnings. Imagine a warning where the effect of the bug is detected tens o...
The Future of C++ Compiler Diagnostics in MSVC and Visual Studio
We are working hard on improving the diagnostics experience in MSVC and Visual Studio. We began this work in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.3 and while not everything is ready yet, we would like to share the early progress. Motivation & Principles New C++ features like concepts and ranges present the opportunity for more expressive code and better-defined APIs. However, to make the most of them, better diagnostics are required from tooling so that constraint failures can be pinpointed and resolved. We are aware that there is a lot of room for improvement, as noted by many of you on Developer Community...
Dev Containers for C++ in Visual Studio
We are happy to share with you that we have added Dev Container support In Visual Studio 2022 17.4 for C++ projects using CMake Presets. Containers are a great way to package up everything for running an application. Through a Dockerfile all prerequisites are captured so that there is a consistent runtime environment anywhere the container is deployed and run Dev Containers expand this concept to capture everything necessary for developing and building an application in the container. We have been observing for some time that containers are becoming more popular in the C++ community for providing reproducible ...