dev_tool_tutorials

Tutorials on common developer tools for computer science students.

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Using Cygwin With Your C++ VSCode Dev Environment

Subject

Once you’ve already set up your VSCode environment on Windows you may find yourself feeling like MinGW wasn’t enough to bridge the Windows-GNU gap. If you need more GNU features so that you and your Linux/MacOS friends can both run the same code, you might consider installing Cygwin. Where MinGW just ports a few GNU tools over to Windows, Cygwin creates an entirely new environment on your system. In essence, when you compile with Cygwin you aren’t considered to be using Windows. You are considered to be using the Unix-like Cygwin platform. This is very helpful, but there is a setup process.

Requirements

The following is assumed about your environment:

• You are familiar with downloading files and navigating windows directories
• You have followed this tutorial and have VSCode installed properly on your Windows machine

Install Cygwin

• Download and run setup-x86_64.exe
• Choose Install from internet
• Choose whatever path you’d like for Cygwin, just make sure to remember it
  • later we will be using the bin folder inside the folder you installed to
• The rest of the settings you can leave as default until you reach Choose a Download Site, you can pick any of these sites.
  • After the downloads complete, the package selector will launch
• Alongside all the default packages, you need to install
  • bash-completion
  • gcc-core
  • gcc-g++
  • chere
• Click the next button until installation completes
  • You should make sure to create a desktop shortcut when it asks

Using Cygwin Terminal in VSCode

Cygwin has its own built-in terminal, and all your handy GNU features are only available in that terminal. So how can we get this terminal to be used in VSCode? We have two methods. I will explain here how to make Cygwin your default terminal. However, I don’t actually recommend that. I will be writing a separate tutorial on how to use different terminals in VSCode. If you follow that tutorial, you can avoid making Cygwin your default (which would not be preferable in all situations) and instead just use it when needed. If you want to proceed with making it your default terminal, follow the steps below:

• Click file>preferences>settings in the top left
• Search for settings.json and click Edit in settings.json
• Find terminal.integrated.shell.windows
  • Change its line to the following (Replacing PATH_TO_CYGWIN with that path that you totally remembered from earlier) "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "PATH_TO_CYGWIN\\bin\\bash.exe"
  • If the line isn’t there, create it. Don’t remove the outer {} braces
• Add these lines below the terminal.integrated.shell.windows line

  "terminal.integrated.env.windows": {
    "CHERE_INVOKING": "1"
  },
  "terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": [
    "--login",
    "-i"
  ],
  

• Cygwin uses a special root folder instead of the usual Windows “C:\\”
  • We will tell our terminal to use this folder
• Add the following line to settings.json, careful not to remove the outer {} braces, "code-runner.terminalRoot": "/cygdrive/"

Open Cygwin in a folder?

Do you want to be able to open your Cygwin terminal in any folder (easily)? You can set up a right-click menu option to open the terminal. (That menu is called the “context menu”) To add Cygwin’s terminal to the context menu, follow the advice on this Stack Overflow page. Don’t want to follow the link? That’s okay. It is really easy. Here’s the important part:

After Cygwin is launched, open up a Cygwin terminal (as an administrator)
and type the command:
chere -i -t mintty -s bash.
Now you should have "Bash Prompt Here" in the Windows right-click context menu.

Conclusion

That’s it! Cygwin should now work in your existing VSCode environment. Using Run Code should now use Cygwin’s build tools. I really really recommend running Cygwin not as your default terminal, but as on of many using the Shell Launcher extension. This will cause problems with Code Runner (CR will only use the default terminal) but these problems will be addressed in the Shell Launcher tutorial.