Basic VS Code setup
In the following, we want to make sure that we all start from a similar VS Code setup.
If you already feel comfortable with VS Code, feel free to skip this page and simply add/change extensions and settings as needed along the way.
We recommend either using an empty VS Code profile or disabling all your installed extensions.
The rest of the tutorial uses an empty profile.
We will start by creating an empty profile. This way we make sure that we are all on the same page and that no existing extensions or custom settings interfere with our changes.
- Open the command palette (
Cmd+Shift+P) - Run the command
>Profiles: New Profile... - Give it a name, e.g.
moderncpp_vscode - Click
Create
To switch to the new profile,
- Open the command palette (
Cmd+Shift+P) - Run the command
>Profiles: Switch Profile... - Select the profile name you chose in the previous step, e.g.
moderncpp_vscode
If you now click the Extensions icon in the Activity bar (the 4 squares) and go to your user settings in VS Code (>Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)), you should see something like
Since we created an empty profile, we have 0 extensions installed and 0 custom settings.
This is going to change in the next couple of chapters.
Alternatively, you can disable all of your existing VS Code extensions (don't worry, you can enable them again at any time).
- Open the command palette (
Cmd+Shift+P) - Run the command
>Extensions: Disable All Installed Extensions
If you now click the Extensions icon in the Activity bar (the 4 squares) and go to your user settings in VS Code (>Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)), you should see something like
The greyed out sections belong to the disabled extensions.
The non-greyed out settings are your basic VS Code settings. They determine how the editor looks and behaves, what files/folders to include in searches, and so on.
For the rest of this tutorial, those basic settings should not matter. You can keep yours as they are or change them along the way. As a reference, you can look at the file user_settings.json.