Visual Studio 2017 add a new feature supporting directly open CMake project now. But it always use its own nested CMake. It's quite annoying since i can't touch that CMake. It has different version, different configuration from my usual one.
So I want to know is there a way to change this behavior, like in CLion, by assigning which CMake to use?
Related
before I explain my current problem with Visual Studio in combination with CMake, I try to explain what I want to accomplish as there might be a better solution.
At our company we have a huge code base mainly written in C for QNX. For development we are using the standard IDE QNX momentics. As this is based on a quite old eclipse version ... the whole IDE sucks.
I'm currently evaluating to use Visual Studio as a replacement. With a really simple HelloWorld-programm I was able to build and debug the project from within VS using CMake and a CMakeSettings.json.
As our code base is basically organized in a tree-like structure, I've created a typical hierarchy of CMakeLists.txt which allows me to build single/multiple projects.
As QNX delivers its own compiler I've created a toolchain file, this is running fine so far, the required toolchain is invoked once a build is triggered via cmake.
Now for the part that I'm struggling with:
How to use this CMake setup in order to develop/debug code from VS?
I had two ideas in mind which don't really work or I'm doing something wrong.
Use the CMake generator for VS 2019 and generate a complete solution. Problem: The toolchain file is not "used" as all projects will be setup with the internal VS compilers. Is there any way to get this working? I thought calling cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$FILE would do the job. Additionally: how would I incorporate the debugger configuration? With this solution the CMakeSettings.json seems to be ignored as VS solutions are used.
Use File->Open->CMake to open the root project. Shouldn't this show all "contained" projects which also include a CMakeLists.txt as projects? I can only see the folder tree in the Solution Explorer. Build a single project from the solution explorer is also not possible ... there is simply no option.
Anyone with experience on this topic?
Minor comment please limit questions to 1 question in the future. Multiple questions clutters questions and makes search results worse.
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I'll answer question #1 this part of question number 1.
"Use the CMake generator for VS 2019 and generate a complete solution. Problem: The toolchain file is not "used" as all projects will be setup with the internal VS compilers. Is there any way to get this working? I thought calling cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$FILE would do the job."
Instead of using Visual Studio as your generator try using "Ninja" instead. Ninja will work if your toolchain code is correct. Toolchains and visual studio are complicated to say the least. If you wanna go down that rabbit hole I can help but that's a separate question
Basically try switching to Ninja instead of Visual Studio as your generator for CMakeSettings.json. Ninja is very easy to write toolchains for.
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"Additionally: how would I incorporate the debugger configuration?"
The MSDN articles are actually quite good. I figured it out this week. In my opinion the debugger configurations are more powerful with the CMake approach than vanilla visual studio.
Configure CMake debugging sessions
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/configure-cmake-debugging-sessions?view=msvc-160
"Tutorial: Debug a CMake project on a remote Windows machine"
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/cmake-remote-debugging?view=msvc-160
Trust me once it clicks you'll love it.
I need to be able to produce the makefile for my C++ project, although I cannot find how to do this within visual studio.
The common solution to this type of problem is to use a cross-platform build system that can generate platform appropriate build files. CMake is one example of this. It can be used to generate Solution and Project files on Windows and make files for Linux. It can also generate make files for mingw32. Note that this will be a fairly significant departure from your current set up and can take some time to get working correctly.
I am creating a very large project (a few thousand lines) and so would rather not use Notepad++. An IDE would make it so much easier. I have experience with Microsoft Visual Studio and love it. Is there some easy way to use Cygwin's GCC from within Microsoft Visual Studio?
Alternately, are there any other good Windows IDEs for GCC besides NetBeans and Eclipse? (I hate both of them with a passion.)
There are several ways to go here:
Option 1: Create a Custom Build Tool
Visual Studio 2005 and newer will let you register custom build tools. They tell the IDE how to transform files of one form (e.g. a .cpp file) into another form (e.g. an .obj file).
So far as I know, no one has done this yet for GCC. And, doing it yourself requires writing COM code, which is probably too deep a pool to dive into just for a single project. You'd have to have a compelling reason to take this project on.
You then have to manually adjust each project to tell it to use the custom build tool instead of the default, since you're using a file name extension (.cpp, probably) that Visual C++ already knows about. You'll run into trouble if you try to mix the VC++ and g++ compilers for a single executable built from multiple modules.
On the plus side, if you were looking to start an open source project, this sounds like a good one to me. I expect you'd quickly gather a big user base.
Option 2: Makefile Project
Start Visual Studio and say File > New Project.
In the Visual C++ section, select Makefile Project
Fill out the Makefile Project Wizard:
Build command line: make
Clean commands: make clean
Rebuild command line: make clean all
You can leave the Output (for debugging) field alone if you've named your executable after the project name and it lands where Visual Studio expects to find it.
Leave the rest of the fields alone unless you know what they are and why you want to change them. As an example, you might choose to pass a -D flag on the Preprocessor definitions line to get separate debug and release outputs. If you know you want this, you know how to set it up, so I'm not going to make this long answer even longer in order to explain it.
You'll be asked the same set of questions for the Release build. If you want to bother with separate debug and release builds, you'd make any changes here.
Having done all this, you still have to create the Makefile, and add a make.exe to your PATH. As with the debug vs. release question, going into that level of detail would push this answer off topic.
As ugly as this looks, it's still easier than creating custom build tools. Plus, you say you need to port to Unix eventually, so you're going to need that Makefile anyway.
Option 3: Cross-Platform Development
You say you want to port this program to Unix at some point, but that doesn't mean you must use GCC on Windows now. It is quite possible to write your program so that it builds under Visual C++ on Windows and GCC/Makefiles on *ix systems.
There are several tools that make this easier. One very popular option is CMake, which is available as an installation time option in newer versions of Visual Studio. There are many alternatives such as SCons and Bakefile.
Clang
You can use the Clang compiler with Visual Studio to target Android, iOS, and Windows.
If you are targeting Android, you can use the Clang/LLVM compiler that ships with the Android NDK and toolchain to build your project. Likewise, Visual Studio can use Clang running on a Mac to build projects targeting iOS. Support for Android and iOS is included in the “Mobile Development with C++” workload. For more information about targeting Android or iOS check out our posts tagged with the keywords “Android” and “iOS”.
If you are targeting Windows, you have a few options:
Use Clang/LLVM; “Clang for Windows” includes instructions to install Clang/LLVM as a platform toolset in Visual Studio.
Use Clang to target Windows with Clang/C2 (Clang frontend with Microsoft Code Generation).
GCC
If your project targets Linux or Android, you can consider using GCC. Visual Studio’s C++ Android development natively supports building your projects with the GCC that ships with the Android NDK, just like it does for Clang. You can also target Linux – either remotely or locally with the Windows Subsystem for Linux – with GCC.
Check out our post on Visual C++ for Linux Development for much more info about how to use Visual Studio to target Linux with GCC. If you are specifically interested in targeting WSL locally, check out Targeting WSL from Visual Studio.
Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/use-any-c-compiler-with-visual-studio/
I'm from the future.
I keep (poking at) a C/C++ toolchain using Visual Code on Win/Lin/Mac and MinGW installed from Choclatey.
(This was done for my sanity - install GDB and GCC however you want)
I've run it with GCC and GDB with IntelliSense using MS's own weird JSON makefiles.
Someday, someone (you?) will write a Gradle or Python script to generate these; for now the examples online in the docs seem to work.
It seems to require three types of JSON thing;
a single IntelliSense configuration for the whole workspace
a Debugging Configuration entry for each binary you want to debug
these can invoke the build tasks
a Build Task per-artifact
I don't think that there's a "require" or "dependency" thingie-mah-bob; sorry
I have a Makefile that I use to build my application in both Windows and Linux. All complex project- and platform-related stuff are already dealt in this Makefile.
Today, I use a common editor to code and call GNU make from command line. Now I am considering to move to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. I already use MSVS2010 when debuging using a not-configured Intel Visual Fortran Empty Project with my files.
I don't want to duplicate my work configuring a new Visual Studio project and I want to use the Makefile instead.
Is there a way to do it with MSVS2010? Or, is there any other better way to keep the configuration at one place "usable" from Windows and Linux?
In the somewhat distant past I used VC++2005 in just this way. The trick is to create an external project (or command-line project or something like that—I forget the terminology now). The command-line you give to this project is make -j4 target (ymmv). Naturally the makefile needs to use cl as the compiler, link as the linker &c.
Now everthing is hooked up, and you can press the f7 key in VC++ to build your project, and f4 takes you through the errors. [I used cygwin make, and it all worked rather well.]
I have a project, which works fine in VS-2010. And runs fine.
But I want to create a make-file by using Omake. How to build the same in Omake.
I have gone through all the documentation of Omake, but it does not say how to make it.
My VS-2010 project contains .c, .cpp, .h, .rc MFC and many subdirectories too.
There is no direct way to convert a project from VS to Omake: you have to write the 'OMakefile's by hand since the two build systems (MSBuild is behind VS) and concepts are somewhat different. Once the OMakefile's are working, you can always create a Visual Studio project of type "Makefile" that calls the omake utility behind the scene.
If the reason for change is that you want to make the projet multi-platform (well, I doubt so since you use MFC), you may consider CMake, a widely-used project generation tool. CMake can generate both Makefiles (GNU) and VS projects, depending on the platform, from a project description.