VSCode developer environment setup for windows?

Archive Blender Development
1

Can somebody help me with the rest of these steps https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Developer_Intro/Environment/Portable_CMake_VSCode ? I’m at the “Building Blender” part ,but the examples appear to be for Linux ,so not sure how to go about doing this for Windows.

2

That section appears to focus on configuration files — I’m not seeing any big platform-dependent obstacles. Are you encountering errors, or looking for a place to start?

3

The configuration files is what I’m trying to figure out. I can’t just copy and paste cause I’m on Windows.

4

I’ll run through it in detail later today to see if there are any gotchas, but the example configuration is about as bog-standard as you can get. You’ll have to change the obvious things, like file paths, but the official VSC documentation they link to covers that.

5

OK, so resurrecting this thread. Still confused on several things. How do I setup for debugging? I get this if I try to create a “Build Task”. Maybe we need instructions for dummies, LOL.

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Developer_Intro/Environment/Portable_CMake_VSCode

build_task
build_task1431×843 75.5 KB

Edit:

After some reading online I solved this. Have these lines in my “settings.json”. It didn’t like the spaces and was failing to run task.

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\cmd.exe",
"terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": ["/k", "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2019\\Community\\Common7\\Tools\\VsDevCmd.bat"],

Need to do something like this for the task to make it work.

"version": "2.0.0",

    

    "options": {

        "shell": {

            "executable": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe",

            "args": [

                "/d", "/c",

                "C:\\Program^ Files^ ^(x86^)\\Microsoft^ Visual^ Studio\\2019\\Community\\VC\\Auxiliary\\Build\\vcvars64.bat",

                "&&"

            ]

        }

    },

    "tasks": [

        {

            "label": "Build Blender",

            "type": "shell",

            "command": "make",

            "group": "build"

        },
6

I don’t use Windows, so this may not help. First, I would read this https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/config-msvc. It explains how to configure the C/C++ extension on Windows including build tasks and debugging.

You don’t need a build task to debug in VSCode, the debugger does not require an executable created through the build tasks. So long as you can provide a path to your final blender.exe in the launch.json file (see the link above) the debugger should work fine.

7

This config has allowed me to debug Blender in VS Code

.vscode/launch.json

{
  // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
  // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
  // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
      {
          "name": "Debug Blender",
          "type": "cppvsdbg",
          "request": "launch",
          "program": "${workspaceFolder}/../build_windows_x64_vc16_Debug/bin/Debug/blender.exe",
          "args": [],               // You could place a .blend file path here to open it by default, or any other Blender args
          "stopAtEntry": false,
          "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/../build_windows_x64_vc16_Debug/bin/Debug",
          "environment": [],
          "externalConsole": false, // This could be set to true if you prefer an external console for debugging
          "preLaunchTask": "Build Blender" // Optional; you can use if you want it to build before launching
      }
  ]
}

.vscode/tasks.json

{
  // See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
  // for the documentation about the tasks.json format
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "Build Blender (Release)",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "make release",
      "group": "build"
    },
    {
      "label": "Build Blender (Developer)",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "make developer",
      "group": "build",
      "problemMatcher": [
        "$gcc"
      ]
    },
    {
      "label": "Build Blender",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "make debug",
      "group": "build",
      "problemMatcher": [
        "$gcc"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

If you’re using an alternative shell by default you’ll potentially also want to add this line to settings.json which will open cmd terminals within the Blender project.
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe"

2 Likes