Setting compilerArgs when generating tasks.json file for compiling

[djairao]

Hello,

I have a scenario where I will have many students creating several C++ projects in VS-Code. To streamline the experience, I am trying to set default flags for g++ so that they are automatically included when the tasks.json file is generated. I tried setting the defaults in several spots and it did not seem to work. After mucking with settings for a few hours, I just decided to modify the following line of javascript with the additional flags in the file code-server/extensions/ms-vscode.cpptools-1.5.1/dist/main.js

`
let args = isCl ? ['/Zi', '/EHsc', '/nologo', '/Fe:', filePath + '.exe', '${file}'] : ['-g', '-Wall', '-std=c++17', '-fsanitize=address', '${file}', '-o', filePath + (isWindows ? '.exe' : '')];

            if (compilerArgs && compilerArgs.length > 0) {
                args = args.concat(compilerArgs);
            }

`

That seems to do the trick. Now, I noticed that the configuration variable compilerArgs is being used in the above source. However, I am unsure where to set a value for it. Setting it in the User/settings.json file as shown below does not help:

`
{
"window.menuBarVisibility": "classic",
"editor.renderControlCharacters": true,
"editor.renderWhitespace": "all",
"editor.rulers": [
80
],
"C_Cpp.clang_format_fallbackStyle": "{ BasedOnStyle: Google, IndentWidth: 4}",
"C_Cpp.autocompleteAddParentheses": true,
"C_Cpp.default.cppStandard": "c++17",
"C_Cpp.default.includePath": ["${myDefaultIncludePath}", "/opt/mvapich2/gnu/8.4/2.3.3/include"],
"C_Cpp.default.compilerArgs": [ "-std=c++17", "-DONE", "-DTwo"],

`

I will be thankful for any tips or ideas on how the compilerArgs parameter in the above code fragment should be set?

[sean-mcmanus]

You shouldn't probably be modifiying the javascript. You could git clone our repo and put a breakpoint at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/blob/main/Extension/src/LanguageServer/cppBuildTaskProvider.ts#L169 to see what is going on -- looks like it's just "undefined". In general, the cppbuild feature (which controls building) wasn't designed to inherit from c_cpp_properties.json or the C_Cpp.default settings (which just controls IntelliSense)....maybe we could accept change to the design, not sure.

If you want to give your students a really streamlined experience, I would recommend setting the configurationProvider and using the CMake Tools or Makefile Tools extensions or compileCommands, i.e. have the build system configure IntelliSense instead of the other way around.

[djairao]

Thank you for your quick response.

Maybe having a configuration variable to set up compiler args would be a good feature/idea. At least by default, I think it would be better to keep things consistent by using the same settings as IntelliSense, if the compiler args are undefined. In addition, it would be nice to have a comment in the generated tasks.json file that indicates where the properties were obtained from (for non-default cases) as in:

    "tasks": [
        {
            "type": "cppbuild",
            "label": "C/C++: g++ build active file",
            "command": "/apps/gnu/8.4.0/bin/g++",
             // Overrides from settings.json
            "args": [  "-g",  "-Wall",   "-std=c++17",  "-fsanitize=address",
                "${file}",
                "-o",
                "${fileDirname}/${fileBasenameNoExtension}"
            ],

[sean-mcmanus]

Did you want to file a feature request? https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/issues/new?assignees=&labels=&template=feature-request.md&title=

[djairao]

Thank you for the link. I created a new issue -- #7860

[djairao]

I am looking into vscode-cmake-tools and it looks like I have to use the command palette to access cmake-tool's features; there aren't any main menu options for this (which would make life a lot easier for novice users). Is this correct (i.e., there are no main menu options) or am I missing something? (I know this is not the vscode-cmake-tool discussions, but thought I would start here, in case someone already knows the answer)

[sean-mcmanus]

VS Code's design doesn't allow extensions to add to the main menu options -- everything goes through the command palette or potentially other UI, such as the task/status bar UI or the right-click menu or code action menus etc.. VS Code expects novice users to learn to use the Command Palette.

[djairao]

To me, the command-pallet seems similar to the commands from emacs 😺