When using VS Code in Linux for C++, I found that there are two files I need to configure: tasks.json and c_cpp_properties.json.
For tasks.json, there is:
"args": [ "-I", "$PATH",]
and for c_cpp_properties.json, there is:
"configurations": ["includePath": ["$PATH1"], ...]
So what's the difference between them? If I need to include a header file, which one should I use?
The tasks.json is the one you need to compile/build your C++ application. If you are adding a new header file, you'll definitely need to specify the path to that header file in args, so that it gets passed to your compiler.
From: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/config-msvc#_create-a-build-task
The args array specifies the command-line arguments that will be
passed to the compiler that was specified in the previous step. They
must appear in the order expected by the compiler.
You definitely need to set this properly if you are compiling/building using VS Code.
The c_cpp_properties.json is mainly used to support the intellisense and auto-completion features of the C++ extension. The includePath tells the extension where to find the header files, so that you can do things like "Go to definition" or other code navigation operations.
From: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/c-cpp-properties-schema-reference#_configuration-properties
includePath An include path is a folder that contains header files
(such as #include "myHeaderFile.h") that are included in a source
file. Specify a list of paths for the IntelliSense engine to use while
searching for included header files. If a path ends with /** the
IntelliSense engine will do a recursive search for header files
starting from that directory. If on Windows with Visual Studio
installed, or if a compiler is specified in the compilerPath setting,
it is not necessary to list the system include paths in this list.
You can also modify c_cpp_properties.json by accessing the Intellisense Configurations UI, by accessing the command palette > C/C++: Edit Configurations (UI).
You can survive without configuring c_cpp_properties.json properly. It's not required to compile/build C++ code. But it can be quite helpful when you're writing your code.
Related
For some reason, the project I am working on names some of it's Cpp header files as *.x
It looks like these files are not being indexed by Clangd and I end up with the following error whenever I try to use references, definitions on objects declared here.
[coc.nvim]: Error on notification "jumpDefinition": definition provider not found for current buffer, your language server doesn't support it.
clangd + coc, works for all other extension types like *.cpp, *.c, *.h, *.hpp. Is there any configuration file where I can add the *.x files as well
I am using Conan package manager on Windows to create a package. The conan command to create the package copies files to a folder within %USERPROFILE%\.conan (or C:\Users\xxxxxxx\.conan). Then from this location it builds a Visual Studio project and ultimately calls doxygen.exe to create a .chm help file in a post-build command. The doxygen command fails with:
error : failed to run html help compiler on index.hhp
Further investigation reveals the hhc.exe command executed by doxygen is failing with:
C:\Users\xxxxxxx\.conan\data\Module\1.0.0\user\channel\build\524dc97e4a3dd1f774ea3897f9e4faf26c5457d2\Documentation>"C:/Program Files (x86)/HTML Help Workshop/hhc.exe" html\index.hhp
HHC5010: Error: Cannot open "C:\Users\xxxxxxx\data\Module\1.0.0\user\channel\build\524dc97e4a3dd1f774ea3897f9e4faf26c5457d2\Documentation\html\Module.chm". Compilation stopped.
Close inspection reveals that in the error message, the ".conan" folder is missing. Sure enough, I confirmed that hhc.exe fails when the index.hpp resides in a folder that has a parent folder that starts with a ".".
Attempts to resolve this:
changing the Doxyfile setting OUTPUT_DIRECTORY to "$(TMP)/DoxygenModule" resolves the error, but creates the .chm file in another location, which I do not prefer.
navigating to the 8DOT3 name of the ".conan" folder, which is "CONAN~1", to run the hhc.exe command, succeeds, but unfortunately I have no way of getting conan to use this 8DOT3 path for creating the package. E.g. C:\Users\xxxxxxx\CONAN~1\...
I can live with the using the %TMP% folder but would prefer generating the .chm in the current folder. Anyone have any ideas?
HTML Help Workshop v1.31 is installed on my machine at C:\Program Files (x86)\HTML Help Workshop, probably from a Visual Studio installation (not sure). I attempted using a version downloaded from Microsoft website (v1.30) as well, which made no difference.
Other info: Conan version 1.18.0, Doxygen version 1.8.14, Windows 10 Version 1809
Unfortunately not a solution, but this is a known limitation in the hhc.exe, see: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/0681145c-223b-498c-b7bf-be83209cbf4e/issue-with-html-workshop-in-a-windows-container?forum=visualstudiogeneral
HTML Help 1.x command line compiler hhc.exe cannot compile CHM file to folder whose full path contains folder name starting with dot. If you have that problem, you probably specified output path with folder starting with dot, e.g. "d:\My files.NET\documentation". You can use dots in folder names but not at the beginning.
Edit 2019-11-15:
I've just pushed a proposed patch to github (pull request 7402, https://github.com/doxygen/doxygen/pull/7402).
This proposed patch changes inside doxygen from the current directory to the short named current directory, but just for the HTML Help compilation.
Edit 2019-11-16:
Code has been integrated in the master version on github.
This is not an answer either. Actually, you found the answer and workaround[s] yourself.
Use OUTPUT_DIRECTORY to specify a directory containing no folder names beginning with periods.
The error you described is a known issue of the MS HTML Help compiler. More general, the HTML Help compiler does not like some folder and file names. Try and stick with these characters _, a..z, A..Z, 0..9. Do not use these signs in particular ., -, # .
Please note that the proprietary CHM file format is about 20 years old (Windows 95, ...). HTML Help is in maintenance mode, which means no new features and bug fixes are expected for either the runtime or the compiler. All mainstream development on HH has stopped.
There is no way to avoid this error if a directory name above begins with a period. Not even if only the necessary files are written by Doxygen and compiling of the index.hhp is done by a third-party tool like FAR HTML using your path that contains .conan. This is because all applications are using the faulty HHA.dll.
The above applies of course to the entire workflow you have described. Maybe you can interrupt it.
Doxygen can be configured not to call the HTMLHelp compiler. Just uncheck the GENERATE_HTMLHELP option (DoxyWizard: Experts > Topics > HTML). You have all files generated by Doxygen in your preferred output directory - but of course without the CHM file. This can be imported later e.g. by HelpNDoc and compiled as a CHM file in another location.
If you can interrupt the workflow and can also make changes to Doxygen's settings, then a preference setting of OUTPUT_DIRECTORY to e.g. C:/CacheMenu/CONAN~1/DOXYGE~1 also works as expected (here used as test case).
No matter what you do, your workaround and copy and paste from another directory outside is a quick solution at this stage. Please note the EDIT in #albert's answer.
Documentation at https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/c-cpp-properties-schema-reference is a bit fragmented. Can I use both path and path/** for recursive search and path/* for non-recursive search in includePath property?
Form the linked documentation (emphasis mine)
path A list of paths for the Tag Parser to search for headers included by your source files. If omitted, includePath will be used as the path. Searching on these paths is recursive by default. Specify * to indicate non-recursive search. For example: /usr/include will search through all subdirectories while /usr/include/* will not.
And from the entry on includePath, since it is used if path is omitted (again, emphasis mine)
includePath An include path is a folder that contains header files (such as #include "myHeaderFile.h") that are included in a source file. Specify a list of paths for the IntelliSense engine to use while searching for included header files. If a path ends with /** the IntelliSense engine will do a recursive search for header files starting from that directory. If on Windows with Visual Studio installed, or if a compiler is specified in the compilerPath setting, it is not necessary to list the system include paths in this list.
Yes, use either path or path/**
For recursive search in includePath property, path/** should be used.
Form the linked documentation (emphasis mine)
includePath An include path is a folder that contains header files
(such as #include "myHeaderFile.h") that are included in a source
file. Specify a list of paths for the IntelliSense engine to use while
searching for included header files. Searching on these paths is not
recursive. Specify ** to indicate recursive search. For example,
${workspaceFolder}/** will search through all subdirectories while
${workspaceFolder} will not. If on Windows with Visual Studio
installed, or if a compiler is specified in the compilerPath setting,
it is not necessary to list the system include paths in this list.
I am using Netbeans 8.0.2 and phpdocumentor 2.8.2 on a windows 7 platform.
I would like to use custom phpdoc.dist.xml config files by project so I can specify framework directories and etc. to exclude from the generated doc. I also want to keep my Netbeans PHPDOC plugin config as generic as possible, without specific output directories, ignore options, config path parameters, etc., so on, so that that the config will apply to all my projects.
The phpdoc.dist.xml file works great. The doc generated is exactly what I want.
The problem or feature, and it seems to be a phpdocumentor one as it also applies from plain command line, is that the phpdoc.bat command (without a specific config parm) has to be run from the same root directory as the phpdoc.dist.xml file, or it ignores it. No problem if I'm using command line as I can change into that directory first, but I would like to use Netbeans. I have searched on this extensively and cannot find an answer.
I considered whether to modify the phpdocumentor files to insert cd /D path/to/myproject/dir to change the directory using some Netbeans variable to represent myproject/dir, but I could not find the right place in the code or the variable to use. Plus, then I'm supporting a custom mod to phpdocumentor.
I did find these directions for a PHPStorm setup, where the author specified a PHPStorm variable for the --config command line option to point to his custom phpdoc.dist.xml.
--config="$ProjectFileDir$/phpdoc.dist.xml"
If I could do the same in Netbeans like maybe "${BASE_DIR}/phpdoc.dist.xml" it would be great, but so far I haven't hit on anything Netbeans will recognize/pay attention to in the PhpDoc script: box.
I have also tried writing a wrapper .bat file to capture my own command line variable %1 and do the directory change to that before calling phpdoc.bat, but Netbeans throws and error and says that's not a valid .bat file. I cannot find any phpdocumentor parameter to configure by specific Netbeans project but the output directory. And I would prefer not to be defining a bunch of projects on subdirectories in Netbeans, just to address phpdocumentor.
Now I am out of ideas. Can anyone point me to a solution?
I have a Visual Studio 2010 solution that contains a library of functions, and I would like to be able to use MATLAB as one of several possible front-ends to this library. Therefore, I would like Visual Studio to automatically generate a mex file when I build the solution, without having to export all my build options and paths to mexopts.bat and open MATLAB to build the file from there. I have seen several suggestions to achieve something similar, for example in these posts:
Matlab 7.1+ and Visual Studio 2005
Compiling a MEX file with Visual Studio
How to use CMake and Visual Studio 2010 (64 bit) to build a MATLAB R2011a (64 bit) mex file?
However, they either seem a bit outdated (making references to files that are no longer to be found) or make use of external tools (eg. CMake). Does anyone know how to set up a new project (within the existing solution) in Visual Studio (2010 and newer) that will build a mex file for contemporary MATLAB releases?
After some experimenting with guidance from this page mentioned in the question, it seems like starting with an empty C++ project the following settings in the project's Property Pages are necessary and sufficient to build a working .mexw64 from Visual Studio 2010:
Configuration properties -> General:
Set Target Extension to .mexw64
Set Configuration Type to Dynamic Library (.dll)
Configureation poperties -> VC++ Directories:
Add $(MATLAB_ROOT)\extern\include; to Include Directories
Configuration properties -> Linker -> General:
Add $(MATLAB_ROOT)\extern\lib\win64\microsoft; to Additional Library Directories
Configuration properties -> Linker -> Input:
Add libmx.lib;libmex.lib;libmat.lib; to Additional Dependencies
Configuration properties -> Linker -> Command Line:
Add /export:mexFunction to Additional Options
$(MATLAB_ROOT) is the path to Matlab's root folder, eg. C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2013a.
So far this has only been tried from a solution created from scratch and built for Matlab 2013a 64-bit. I assume that to build for 32-bit one only needs to change both occurrences of 64 to 32. I will update the post when I have confirmed that this works for an existing solution.
EDIT: As expected this works for projects added to existing solutions. Remember to set the new project to be dependent on the project that creates the library.
Edit 2: Following this question I can confirm that the above steps work in Visual Studio 2012, 2013, and 2017 too.
Quickly Setting up Visual Studio Projects for MEX files with a Property Sheet
All of the settings can be applied via property sheets, a mechanism for rapidly applying Visual Studio project configurations.
Steps:
Download the property sheet (MATLAB.props) from this GitHib repo.
It's short and sweet. I'd actual urge you to make your own to learn what's involved in the process. See the Property Sheet Details section below for a description.
Set the MATLAB root environment variables: MATLAB_ROOT for your 64-bit MATLAB installation, and MATLAB32_ROOT for any 32-bit MATLAB installations (e.g. C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2014b\). This folder has the subdirectories bin, extern, sys, etc. Restart VS if it's opened.
Create an empty DLL project in Visual Studio, optionally creating a x64 solution platform. Do this by choosing "Win32 Project" and selecting DLL as follows:
In "Property Manager" (select from the View menu), for each project's build configuration, right click and choose "Add Existing Property Sheet...", and select the appropriate property sheet (32 or 64 bit). (See screenshot below)
That's it!
Just remember that when going between MATLAB to use your MEX file and Visual Studio to build a new version, it will be necessary to run a clear mex or clear specificMEXFileName to be able to overwrite it.
I build almost all my MEX files this way.
UPDATE (05/22/15): The file MATLAB.props now supports the Parallel Computing Toolbox for using mxGPUArray objects. If the toolbox path and library (gpu.lib) exist on your machine, they can be used. Just include the CUDA SDK "Build Customization" (that should be installed if you've installed the CUDA SDK and installed the Visual Studio integrations) to include cuda_runtime.h, etc. Finally, link with cudart_static.lib (but keep Inherit... checked or you will get other linker errors).
Property Sheet Details
There are only a few important settings in the property sheet:
Adding $(MATLAB_ROOT)\extern\include to the AdditionalIncludeDirectories paths (with inherited paths from parent configurations) -- the location of mex.h.
Adding $(MATLAB_ROOT)\extern\lib\win64\microsoft to the AdditionalLibraryDirectories paths -- the location of libmex.lib, etc.
Listing the libraries: libut.lib;libmx.lib;libmex.lib;libmat.lib.
Exporting mexFunction (it's a shared library): /EXPORT:mexFunction.
Setting the output file extention (e.g. .mexw64 for x64).
Not necessary, but it also specifies an output manifest that is NOT embedded in the library, sets MATLAB_MEX_FILE, and turns on generation of data required for profiling.
For completeness, note that there is a more formal "build configuration" system for project configuration, which includes a property sheet, but a loose property sheet is sufficient for setting up a simple MEX project.
A Note About -largeArrayDims
The -largeArrayDims option is a switch to the mex command in MATLAB that simply indicates not to define MX_COMPAT_32. So, in Visual Studio, you don't have to do anything since this is not defined by default. If you want the opposite behavior (-compatibleArrayDims), then define MX_COMPAT_32 in the Preprocessor section.
What's libut.lib for?
I include libut.lib, which provides a few nice functions for detecting a break (CTRL-C) from within a MEX file. The relevant declarations (although this is getting off topic):
// prototype the break handling functions in libut (C library)
extern "C" bool utIsInterruptPending();
extern "C" void utSetInterruptPending(bool);
For building/linking/compiling, automate visual studio with an extension or macro to
start a thin Matlab client (using -nojvm -noawt -nodesktop -nosplash commandline options, this starts in less than a second on my machine)
generate the binary by calling mex (including the other dependencies etc).
if debugging is activated, attached the visual studio debugger to your newly started thin matlab client(any break points you click in VS will be active).
I have automated this for visual studio 2010. This way, you work with your mex-wrapper entirely from the visual studio IDE, have 4 extra pushbuttons for debugging etc. Compile errors are echoed from a matlab terminal window instead of within Visual Studio. Find the Macros uploaded here:
http://www.mathworks.se/matlabcentral/fileexchange/39549-visual-studio-toolbar-for-mex-interface-with-video-tutorial