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Makefile Tools

Enhancing Makefile development in VS Code.

Introduction

Makefile Tools provides the native developer a full-featured, convenient, and powerful workflow for Makefile-based projects in Visual Studio Code. It enhances the development experience with pre and post-configuration script automation, allows for easy switching between multiple configurations, and supports rich IntelliSense features for Makefile. The customizable Project Outline view and environment variable management also simplifies the development experience. Additionally, it can generate a compilation database for integration with Clang tools and other editors/IDEs.

Features

Getting Started

Activating the extension

The extension will activate when it finds a Makefile in your ${workspaceFolder}. If your Makefile does not reside in the root of your folder, use the makefile.makefilePath (which generates the make switch -f) or makefile.makeDirectory (which generates the make switch -C) settings to instruct the extension where to find it.

Pre-configuring your project

If you need any environment variables to be set or any terminal operations to be run before configure/build (like the usual ./autogen.sh, ./configure or vcvarsall.bat), you need to launch VSCode from a terminal that is already set up according to your project requirements OR you can point the makefile.preConfigureScript setting to a batch script file and invoke it at any time via the command makefile.preconfigure in the palette. By setting makefile.alwaysPreConfigure to true, you don't need to run the pre-configure command separately. The extension is going to invoke the script before every configure operation.

Configuring your project

By default, the extension will attempt to use a make program that resides within your $PATH to configure the project. If you use a different flavor of the make tool or if it is not in your $PATH, use the makefile.makePath setting to instruct the extension where to find it. Provide a file/command that is in the system path, prefixed with ${workspaceRoot}, or an absolute path as relative paths will not be resolved properly.

The extension can also avoid running the make program when it configures your project, if you point the makefile.buildLog setting to the output of a build.

Now, you are ready to configure your project. If you normally just run make in the terminal to configure/build your project, you shouldn't need to do anything else at this point besides accept the prompt from cpptools to allow this extension to configure IntelliSense:

If you don't see that message, or you accidentally dismissed it, you can grant Makefile Tools permission to configure IntelliSense by running the C/C++: Change Configuration Provider... command and selecting Makefile Tools from the list.

If you regularly pass additional arguments to make, you should use the makefile.configurations setting to create a configuration object and specify the arguments to pass to make with the makeArgs property. There are other options you can configure in this object as well. If you configure make in multiple different ways, you can create multiple configuration objects with different arguments. Just make sure to give your configurations a unique name so that you can tell them apart.

Post-configuring your project

If you need any environment variables to be set, modified, or deleted, or any terminal operations to be run after configure/build, you need to launch VSCode from a terminal that is already set up according to your project requirements OR you can point the makefile.postConfigureScript setting to a batch script file and invoke it at any time via the command makefile.postConfigure in the palette. By setting makefile.alwaysPostConfigure to true, you don't need to run the post-configure command separately. The extension is going to invoke the script after every configure operation.

Building targets

To build a target, run the Makefile: Set the target to be built by make command (default target is "all") and then run the Makefile: Build the current target. There are also convenience commands to build ALL, build clean, etc. without having to change your active build target.

Debugging and running targets

To Debug or run a target, run the Makefile: Set the make launch configuration command and select the target you want to debug or run. If a configuration for that target has not already been added to the makefile.launchConfigurations setting, then one will be added for you at this time. Then run the Makefile: Debug the selected binary target or Makefile: Run the selected binary target in the terminal command to start debugging or running the target without a debugger attached.

If you need to pass additional arguments to your targets, update the makefile.launchConfigurations by adding the binaryArgs property to the configuration.

Resources

• Makefile Settings for all available settings, defaults, and substitution support. • Repositories to get the configurations for a select number of repositories that we have tested. • Troubleshooting for reasons and workarounds for errors you might run into. • Github for source code, issues, and contributing.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

You can file issues with us using one of our templates:

Bug Report: If you see an error message or encounter an issue while using the Makefile Tools extension.…

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