Windows Setup (MinGW)

Rem. This part is only for advanced users. THe use of Visual Studio is encouraged.

While MS Visual Studio is the most standard approach to compile C++ on Windows, you may use alternative compiler and IDE. These alternative solution can be lighter than using the full Visual Studio IDE, but require more technical set-up.

- Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a lightweight code editor that can be use to edit C++ code (as well as other programming language).
- VS Code is however only a code editor, and doesn't provide a C++ compiler in itself. The general approach is to install a compiler separately, and add it to the Windows path in order to be detected by VS Code.
- MinGW is an implementation of the Open-Source gcc compiler on Windows. It is the main alternative to the compiler provided by Visual Studio.

System setup

These steps need to be done only once on a given computer.

Follow the instructions described on this page to install MinGW and set VS Code.

1. Install MSYS2
- MSYS2 is a Software package manager for Windows allowing to install softwares bundles from command lines.
2. Install MinGW through MSYS2 (The C++ compiler)
- MinGW is the C++ compiler we will use through VS Code.

pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain

3. Add MinGW compiler to the Windows path.
- Allow to call g++ from the command line, and enable VS Code to detect the path to the compiler.

4. Install the C++ extension in VS Code.
- Allow VS code to provide color highlight and auto-completion on a C++ project.

Compiling in VS Code

This step needs to be done every time you will open a C++ project.

Let us consider the root_directory of the project (directory with the CMakeLists.txt) to be examples/example_compilation/

This directory can be adapted to any other scene example.

1. Open the directory root_directory in VS Code using "File" \(\rightarrow\) "Open Folder".
Rem. Don't open directly a .cpp/.hpp file in VS Code, otherwise you will not load the entire project, but only a single file.

2. Compile the code in selecting the "Build" option in the taskbar on the bottom of the window.
- Select the compiler "GCC" associated to the MinGW path that should appear in the choices.

Once compiled, the file build/example_compilation.exe should be generated. You can run the executable either:

- In double-clicking on this file
- In typing on the VS Code terminal:

.\build\example_compilation.exe