{"id":26246,"date":"2020-07-08T17:25:39","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T17:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/?p=26246"},"modified":"2020-07-20T19:52:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T19:52:36","slug":"c-linux-development-with-visual-studio-incremental-build-improvements-and-expanded-shell-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/c-linux-development-with-visual-studio-incremental-build-improvements-and-expanded-shell-support\/","title":{"rendered":"C++ Linux development with Visual Studio: incremental build improvements and expanded shell support"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visual Studio 2019 allows C++ developers to target both Windows and Linux (including the Windows Subsystem for Linux<\/a>) from the comfort of a single IDE. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.7 Preview 3<\/a> introduces two features specific to Linux development: improved build incrementality for MSBuild-based Linux projects, and support for a wider range of Linux distributions and shells.<\/p>\n

There are two ways C++ developers can target Linux systems from Visual Studio. Our recommendation for anything cross-platform or with an eye to open-sourcing is our native support for CMake<\/a>. This allows you to leverage the same source code and build scripts to target multiple platforms. Alternatively, you can create a MSBuild-based Linux project<\/a> for a familiar Visual Studio experience.<\/p>\n

Improved build incrementality for MSBuild-based Linux projects<\/h4>\n

You can now leverage Ninja<\/a> for faster incremental builds in MSBuild-based Linux projects. To enable building with Ninja, navigate to Property Pages > General and set \u201cEnable Incremental Build\u201d to \u201cWith Ninja\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Make sure you have ninja installed on your Linux system. You can install ninja on Debian-based Linux systems with the following commands:<\/p>\n

sudo apt-get update\r\n\r\nsudo apt-get install ninja-build<\/pre>\n
We tested Ninja\u2019s build performance with a MSBuild-based Linux project that contained 1000 .h files and 1000 .cpp files. Ninja led to faster build times for both a full rebuild and a build where one header file was changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nEnd to end build time for full rebuild (in min)<\/strong><\/td>\nEnd to end build time with one change (in min)<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Enable Incremental Build == With Ninja<\/strong><\/td>\n8:01<\/td>\n0:32<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Enable Incremental Build == No<\/strong><\/td>\n12:57<\/td>\n5:26<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
 <\/p>\n
These tests were run against a local VM (Ubuntu 20.04) connected to Visual Studio over SSH, but you can leverage these improvements with both our SSH support and native support for WSL. As a reminder, in MSBuild-based Linux projects you can select your platform toolset (WSL or remote) via Property Pages > General > Platform Toolset.<\/p>\n
Support for a wider range of Linux distributions and shells<\/h4>\n
We also added support for a wider range of Linux distributions and shells. These changes apply to both CMake projects and MSBuild-based Linux projects targeting a remote Linux system or WSL. Visual Studio now queries for the shell the first time a command is issued. It then decides how to format a command line when redirecting stderr and how to detach from a running command based on the shell that is discovered. Visual Studio now supports the following shells: sh, csh, bash, tcsh, ksh, zsh, and dash<\/strong>. If the shell found on the Linux system is not supported, then we fall back to explicitly use \u201csh\u201d for all commands.<\/p>\n
We also added new options and commands to ConnectionManager.exe<\/a> to help you override the choice of shell for a connection. ConnectionManager.exe is a command-line utility to manage stored remote connections outside of Visual Studio.<\/p>\n