Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

Microsoft has released a cross language cross platform code editor, vscode, with advanced features packaged into a command-based system (fewer menus, more commands). It has a C/C++ (instructions) module which supports Intellisense for easy code navigation and auto completion.

1. Install VS Code

Install VS Code on your native operating system (where your graphical output is). VS

  1. Install VS Code download
  2. Install extensions:
    • C/C++ for editing and debugging C/C++ code
  3. Use Makefiles for compiling within VSCode blog, extension
    • The Makefile has to be in the base folder to be detected by the plugin automatically. For projects with a Makefile in a subdirectory, configure your workspace with makefile.makeDirectory pointing to the subdirectory (e.g. src) relative to the workspace base.
    • For cross compilation, use the preconfiguration and set makefile.preConfigureSript to the SDK environment setup script.

2. VS Code Remote Development

VS Code Remote Development simplifies remote development by accessing the remote file system, running remote compilations and executions. This is achieved by running a server portion of the editor on the remote machine (giving all access to files, compilers, executables) and a client portion of the editor locally. For more details see the Overview.

2.1 Windows - WSL as remote target

Since the development tools are installed in WSL you will need to use a WSL remote session instructions

2.2 SSH as remote target

For our work, you’ll need to use Remote SSH to connect to the COE machines. Make sure to connect to remote.coe.neu.edu (instead of gateway.coe.neu.edu). VS Code can leave some server processes dangling sometimes which is against the COE usage policy. To still allow for remote editing, we got our own server. There, you can also run the QEMU simulator.

3 Working as a group in the lab sessions

For joint editing and working on the same ZedBoard, we recommend VS Code Live Share.

4 Other Extensions for VS Code