Setup

• Visual Studio Code (VSCode) - IDE for Windows, Linux, Mac
• To work remotely, you can use the Remote - SSH extension to connect to any server that supports SSH connection
• Extensions are installed into the local environment - extensions need to be installed individually within each remote environment we might want to work in
• Terminal can be opened from VSCode
• Autosave can be used

Editor

• It has intellisense and stuff

The clang compiler

• Most major programming languages have a governing body, often referred to as the Standards Committee, which decides what is allowed/disallowed in a programming language
• New standards are approved every so often (e.g. C++20)
• Compiler developers release a new version to support the new standard when one is released
• Main compilers for C/C++ programs
  • Microsoft Visual C/C++ Compiler
    • bundled with Microsoft Visual Studio
  • GNU Compiler Collection (gcc)
    • most commonly used compiler used by students and in academia, may still be true
    • Most Linux installations have gcc pre-installed
    • is official compiler for GNU and Linux systems
  • clang/LLVM
    • clang compiler - frontend that understands syntax of supported languages, converts to Intermediate Representation (IR) supported by the LLVM Compiler Infrastucture project
• To compile from the command line (using clang, for example), use clang <files>
  • Never supply names of header files on command line to compiler
  • Compiler compiles all given implementation files and produces an executable file if compilation is succesful
  • With no output file name, compiler defaults to using a.out
• We can use additional command linen arguments for a compiler:
  • e.g. clang -std=c99 -g -Wall main.c -o myprogram
    • -std=c99 - C 1999 Standard
    • -g - tells compiler to generate source level debug info
    • -Wall - diagnostic flag that can be read as Warn All
    • -o - change output
    • -I - path for header files - don’t provide actual path to a header file!
  • For CS136L: CFLAGS="-std=c99 -g -Wall -I/u2/cs136l/pub/common" - set compiler flags to variable

Compiling via VSCode

• Configure build task for project
• Create .vscode directory in project root, configure tasks with tasks.json and launch.json