Is there a way to pre-pend or post-pend a VSCode command C_Cpp.ConfigurationSelect before/after a tasks.json task has been run?

[onecable5781]

I currently have a tasks.json task which does a CMake debug build via terminal commands:

 "label": "LCD",
 "type": "shell",
 "command": "cmake -S . -B ./cmake/dbg -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug; cmake --build ./cmake/dbg --config Debug",

For release builds, I have a different task:

 "label": "LCR",
 "type": "shell",
 "command": "cmake -S . -B ./cmake/rel -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release; cmake --build ./cmake/rel --config Release"

Corresponding to a debug or release code that I am working on/going to run, I have corresponding configurations in c_cpp_properties.json

{
    "name": "LCD",
    "compileCommands": "${workspaceFolder}/cmake/dbg/compile_commands.json"
},
{
    "name": "LCR",
    "compileCommands": "${workspaceFolder}/cmake/rel/compile_commands.json"
}

Currently, I manually choose either of these configurations (via VSCode command C_Cpp.ConfigurationSelect so that the correct compile_commands.json can be used for intellisense/highlighting of code, etc.

Is there a way to pass the VSCode command of having the LCD configuration be selected automatically when task LCD is run?

XPost from SO

This is possibly related to this issue or this but these issues are so many years apart and it is not clear to me if there is a command that does take an optional parameter to set the active configuration. Is the following a syntactically correct tasks.json task?

 "label": "LCD",
 "type": "shell",
 "command": "C_Cpp.ConfigurationSelect=\"LCD\"; cmake -S . -B ./cmake/dbg -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug; cmake --build ./cmake/dbg --config Debug",

[bobbrow]

No, I wouldn't expect that command to work. You can't set a VS Code setting with a shell command.

Maybe I'm missing something, but have you tried using the CMake Tools extension? Your configuration command seems simple enough that that extension should be able to get things right for you without any special configuration. That extension will also set up the IntelliSense configurations automatically for you to align with your current build type (Debug vs. Release).

The configuration would look like this:

{
    "name": "LC",
    "configurationProvider": "ms-vscode.cmake-tools"
}

And you can either use tasks (the is a "cmake" task type) or commands to start a build.

[onecable5781]

Hi Bob,

There is a reason for not using the CMake extension -- I sometimes also want to run raw make builds which require a task as well. So I have all my builds (CMake, MSBuild.exe using a .vcxproj file) called from the same tasks.json as different tasks and this has worked well for me thus far.

Looking at some other related issues on this topic, I came across this issue and the suggestion there which was to use:

vscode.commands.executeCommand('cpptools.setActiveConfigName', "configName")

Trying to convert this command into a task, I tried to have the following in my task inside of tasks.json:

"command": "${command:cpptools.setActiveConfigName};cmake -S . -B ./cmake/linux/dbg; cmake --build ./cmake/linux/dbg"

As expected, this fails (since I am not providing the configuration name), but it gives a good error message which is that "the requested configuration name is not found: {0}"

So, I believe I am syntactically quite close here...VSCode seems to be looking to execute the first of the three chained commands and it is infact looking to set the active configuration from the c_cpp_properties.json file. The only question now is, how do I pass the configuration named "LCD" as an argument to the first command in the task above. Do you have any suggestion as to how to pass an argument (the name of the configuration) to the first command here?

Thank you.

[bobbrow]

You can take a look at "input" variables and try a "command" type. The name of the argument for this command is "configurationName", but the command itself returns void so I don't know if you'll run into trouble with the shell task when it resolves this type of variable.

[bobbrow]

I forgot the link to the docs. Here you go: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/reference/variables-reference#_input-variables

[onecable5781]

Thanks Bob. I got the following to work!

"inputs": [
        {
            "type": "command",
            "id": "configurationNamelcd",
            "command": "cpptools.setActiveConfigName",
            "args": "LCD"
        }
]

Following task added fresh:

 "label": "setlcdconfig",
 "type": "shell",
 "command": "${input:configurationNamelcd}"

and my actual debug build command task -- same as already specified in the OP with an additional dependsOn

"dependsOn": [
       "setlcdconfig"
 ]

So, now, even if the active configuration is "LCR", on running task "LCD", setlcdconfig task is run which runs a command setting the active configuration to "LCD" automagically :-)

[starball5]

I sometimes also want to run raw make builds which require a task

If you're using CMake for your project, and this is an external project your project depends on, you could use ExternalProject.

[onecable5781]

If you're using CMake for your project, and this is an external project your project depends on, you could use ExternalProject.

I try to use raw makefiles crafted myself outside of CMake as much as possible. It lets me know exactly what compiler options/flags I am passing. CMake, great as it is, introduce an opaque layer of abstraction that I am not completely comfortable with. There have been subtle bugs I have caught in my codebase by passing very specific make flags in an easy fashion. The default CMake Visual Studio .vcxproj file (generated by the Visual Studio generator), for instance, is extraordinarily more complicated than a Visual Studio native default .vcxproj file. This boggles my mind -- CMake folks know more about Visual Studio than the IDE developers themselves and the Microsoft Visual Studio team does not care enough to provide good enough defaults? What else can explain the order of magnitude difference between the two .vcxproj files?