{"id":30481,"date":"2022-04-25T16:57:46","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T16:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/?p=30481"},"modified":"2022-04-25T19:21:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T19:21:18","slug":"customizing-github-codespaces-for-cpp-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/customizing-github-codespaces-for-cpp-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Customizing GitHub Codespaces for C++ Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

“There’s no worse punishment than worthless, hopeless labor.” \u2014 The Myth of Sisyphus<\/em> by Albert Camus<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Configuring a development environment for a non-trivial C++ project is a process that can be error-prone, tedious, and time-consuming. For would-be contributors to projects, struggling with these initial steps can be a frustrating introduction to a project. Even seasoned developers may run into issues with their existing development environments when working on projects that have different, and sometimes conflicting, dependencies.<\/p>\n

A GitHub Codespace<\/a> provides a cloud-hosted development container that can be customized specifically for a project, even permitting different customizations for different branches. In this walkthrough, you’ll learn how to create a codespace, customize the development container, and configure Visual Studio Code’s C++ extensions by walking through the steps for the vcpkg-tool<\/a> repository.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Preparation<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Availability of GitHub Codespaces<\/h3>\n

GitHub Codespaces are currently available to GitHub accounts that are members of organizations on a GitHub Team<\/a> or GitHub Enterprise Cloud<\/a> plan. Access for individual users is currently in beta<\/a> testing. An organization owner can enable or disable codespaces for an organization<\/a> and set spending limits<\/a> with only a few clicks. Organization owners can also apply policies that restrict what machine types<\/a> are available to repositories in order to prevent excessive resource usage. If you are a C++ developer that currently does not have access to this feature, we’d like to learn more (survey link)<\/a> about your environment and interest in the feature.<\/p>\n

Preparing your vcpkg-tool repository<\/h3>\n

vcpkg-tool is the repository for the front-end executable of the vcpkg dependency manager<\/a>, which helps you manage C and C++ libraries for your project. The vcpkg ecosystem currently has around 2000 distinct packages<\/a> in its catalog. You can learn more about vcpkg at the Microsoft C++ Blog<\/a>. Since you are unlikely to have permissions to modify the microsoft\/vcpkg-tool<\/a> directly, you should use GitHub’s fork feature to obtain a copy of the repository into an account that you control. Navigate to https:\/\/github.com\/microsoft\/vcpkg-tool<\/a>, login, and click the Fork<\/strong> button for the repository. On the following page, click the Create fork<\/strong> button.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

After a few seconds, you should have a vcpkg-tool repository that you control and from which you can submit pull requests to the upstream repository. Since this is an active repository, the requirements for building it might have changed since this was written. So that you can reliably follow along, you should create a branch from commit 48006ab<\/code> and work from that point in history. To create a branch from that specific commit, append \/tree\/48006ab<\/code> to the URL for your forked vcpkg-tool repository to browse the repository at that point in history, then click the dropdown branch button on the left of the page (it should show the commit hash 48006ab73a<\/code>), type in the desired name for your branch, and then click Create branch: <your-branch-name-here> from ‘48006ab’<\/strong>. Now, let’s explore the repository some to get an understanding of what is required to be able to build and test the project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Using github.dev to Explore a Repository with Visual Studio Code<\/h2>\n

github.dev<\/a> is an instance of Visual Studio Code running in the browser, with no backing computation or storage behind it. It allows you to use many of the editor features of Visual Studio Code, including source control operations and many extensions, without requiring a clone of the repository or any tools beyond a web browser. It is a great way to explore a repository or to make simple changes that do not require building or testing your code. We’ll use it to explore our newly created repository so that we know what we need to do to properly set up a build and test environment for our codespace later on. This allows us to do a lot of the “busy work” without incurring charges for a codespace environment.<\/p>\n

Press the .<\/strong> (period) key on your keyboard to open up github.dev for that repository. Alternatively, you can change the github.com<\/code> domain for the URL to github.dev<\/code> and load that web page. This works for any GitHub repository. After Visual Studio Code loads in the browser, you should notice that the Remote “Quick Access” status bar button in the lower left will indicate that you are connected directly to GitHub.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

Feel free at this time to familiarize yourself with the features of Visual Studio Code by opening up the Command Palette by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P<\/strong> (Cmd+Shift+P<\/strong> on macOS) and running the Get Started: Open Walkthrough.<\/strong>.. command and selecting a walkthrough. Once you feel comfortable progressing, continue on with our exploration of the repository.<\/p>\n

Build and Test Prerequisites<\/h3>\n

If you read through the Markdown (.md<\/code>) files in the root of the repository and in the docs\/<\/code> directory, you’ll find a handful of tools that will need to be installed in order to build and test the repository. You may find further requirements in the root CMakeLists.txt<\/code> file, such as requiring a C++17-capable compiler. The collection of things that must exist on the system in order to work in the project are:<\/p>\n