'The configuration option popup for debugging a c++ project in Visual Studio Code does not appear

so I want to debug my .cpp program file but when I click on the Run and Debug button and proceed to select my debugging environment (C++ (GDB/LLDB)), the popup to select the configuration option does not even appear at all and the debugging just doesn't start.

This is before I click the environment popup:

enter image description here

and this is after: enter image description here

Any help I can get for this problem is greatly appreciated as I can't seem to find any solutions at all on the internet, thank you very much!

p.s I've already tried uninstalling VS Code completely off my laptop and resetted all the settings and it didn't work.



Solution 1:[1]

Are you sure you installed the C/C++ Studio Code extension? If you don't get the popup, try writing the json files manually. Create a .vscode folder in your working directory. In there create a file launch.json in which you declare how you run the debugger

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Debug",
      "type": "cppdbg",
      "request": "launch",
      "program": "${workspaceRoot}\\test.exe",
        "stopAtEntry": true,
        "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
        "preLaunchTask": "Build Debug",
        "miDebuggerPath": "c:\\mingw64\\bin\\gdb.exe"
    }
  ]
}

This runs the gdb debugger that came with MinGW. You need to provide the path to your debugger at miDebuggerPath.

This debugs an executable test.exe that needs to be created in debug mode. For this you have the preLaunchTask option. In .vscode create a file tasks.json in which you describe the debug task as

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "type": "cppbuild",
      "label": "Build Debug",
      "command": "g++",
      "args": [
        "${workspaceRoot}\\test.cpp",
        "-g",
        "-o",
        "${workspaceRoot}\\test.exe"
      ],
    }
  ],
  "version": "2.0.0"
}

This uses the gcc or g++ compiler that also comes with MinGW to compile a single source file test.cpp into the test.exe binary. You can select the debug launch configuration in the lower left corner of Studio Code and click Run.

Sources

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Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Michael