Overview of Support in Visual Studio 2017Īlthough this article is an introduction to CMake, it makes sense to start with a brief walk-through of the support for it in Visual Studio. This article provides an introduction to CMake through a series of examples to help you, as VC++ developers, to create and maintain CMake projects.

This means it is possible to create, edit, build, run and debug C++ code in Visual Studio 2017 without the need to explicitly generate VC++ projects, as that is taken care behind the scenes by the system. Although CMake has had support for all versions of Visual Studio, starting with version 6, Visual Studio 2017 is the first version to support CMake. CMake uses scripts (called CMakeLists.txt) to generate environment specific build files, such as Visual Studio projects, XCode projects, make scripts and others. CMake is a cross-platform open-source tool for defining the build process for native applications independently of compilers and environments. On the right, top, there is the editor panel, and on the right, bottom is the output window where any errors are displayed.One of the important changes in Visual Studio 2017 for native development is support for CMake. On the left, there is the list of projects and their associated code. Below, you see a screen shot of my solution open in Visual Studio.

In the skeleton code for the first lab, there are four projects: One for each of the three parts of the lab and another for the skeleton of the first programming assignment. It is sort of like having several different build targets in a Makefile. If you would like to have multiple executables together in the same Visual Studio entity, a solution is how you do it. In general, each project is associated with exactly one executable (or sometimes a DLL or other entity).Ī 'Solution' (.sln) is a collection of projects that are Information about any extra include paths or library files needed toĬompile. In Visual Studio, a 'Project' (.vcxproj) is sort of like a Makefileīecause it knows about all of the different files that need to beĬompiled together to make an executable. Choose C++ and then click the button that says 'Start Visual Studio'. The first time Visual Studio runs, it will ask you what language you want to use so it can set itself up properly.

C++ visual studio code tutorial