I use Visual Studio when I work at the company. Visual Studio does provide a better coding experience on the Windows platform. But honestly, the majority of the coding at the company is just bug fixing, which is less enjoyable. I’ve made a plan about improving my c++ coding skills since 2024 in my spare time with my Manjaro system. But I don’t want to spend too much time diving into details about compiling, linking, etc., at least for now. I want an effortless dev environment to build c++ projects just like Visual Studio does. After some searching, I gotta say, building c++ projects on Linux isn’t as hard as it seems at first glance.

Compilers and Debug Tools

In arch-like systems, installing these tools are easy:

sudo pacman -S gcc gdb clang cmake

VScode CPP Extensions

Just as what I’ve done for my scientific works, VS code is still my first choice IDE, only with a few more extensions needed for a C++ building environment.

I installed C/C++ Extension Pack, containing C/C++, C/C++ Themes, CMake, and CMake Tools extensions.

VSCode CMake Commands

Create a C++ Project

Open an empty folder and press Ctrl+Shift+P, type CMake: Quick Start to create a new C++ project. It will prompt you to name your project, choose between a C or C++ project, specify whether it is a library or executable, and finally generate a CMakeLists.txt, main.cpp, and a build folder under the empty parent folder. And here is a good starting point to tweak your C++ project settings.

Choose a Compiler

Press Ctrl+Shift+P and type CMake: Select a Kit. It will prompt you to choose compilers installed on your system. In my case, I have GCC and Clang compilers installed, so I choose GCC as my default compiler which i think it’s enough for newbies. Don’t forget to regenerate your build system with the command Cmake: Configure. Interestingly, the output terminal in VS code shows that CMake uses Ninja instead of Make as its default build tool. I have never used Ninja before so I thought it’s a good opportunity to try this fast, lightweight build tool.

Compile the Project

Press Ctrl+Shift+P and type CMake: Build or F7 to actually build the whole project. If any compiling error happens, you can find it in the bottom Problems panel. The compiled library or executable object would be found under the build folder.

Switch Release/Debug

VS Code compiles the C++ project in Debug mode by default. Sometime we may switch to Release mode for better optimization. Press Ctrl+Shift+P, type CMake: Select Variant, and select Release or Debug as it prompts. It would automatically regenerate the build system.