Developing with Visual Studio Code on macOS

This topic describes the steps needed to setup Visual Studio Code for AVBlocks development on macOS. These steps have been verified to work with Xcode 15.0.1, on macOS Ventura 13.5.2.

Visual Studio Code

Download and install from Visual Studio Code site.

Open Visual Studio Code and press Cmd + Shift + p. Select Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH.

Also install the C/C++ Extension Pack.

Create CMake project

Follow the steps in Create a Command Line Tool using CMake to create a CMake project.

Automate the build

Add the following Visual Studio Code specific files to the .vscode subdir:

.vscode/tasks.json

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "Build",
            "type": "shell",
            "osx": {
                "command": "${workspaceFolder}/build.sh",
            },
            "group": {
                "kind": "build",
                "isDefault": true
            }
        }
    ]
}

.vscode/launch.json

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Launch (lldb)",
            "type": "cppdbg",
            "request": "launch",
            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
            "osx": {
                "program": "${workspaceFolder}/build/debug/simple-converter",
                "MIMode": "lldb",
            },
        }    
    ]
}

Test the build

Test the build by pressing Cmd + Shift + B. Visual Studio Code should execute the build.sh script automatically.

Test the debugging

Set a breakpoint on the first line of int main(int argc, const char *argv[]) inside src/main.cpp. Press F5 to launch the debugger. It should stop at the breakpoint.