Setting up VSCode

Goto the website and follow the instructions. (It’s much easier as of writing)

For code completion via remote add the line set( CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS ON to your CMakeLists.txt in the root of the project add a c_cpp_properties.json and in there put ` “compileCommands”: “${workspaceFolder}/build/compile_commands.json”` in the appropriate location.

Example setup in my remote arm target.

    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Linux",
            "includePath": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/**",
                "/usr/include/**",
                "/usr/include/glib-2.0/",
                "/usr/include/gstreamer-1.0"
            ],
            "defines": [],
            "compilerPath": "/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-g++",
            "cStandard": "c11",
            "cppStandard": "c++14",
            "intelliSenseMode": "linux-gcc-arm64",
            "configurationProvider": "ms-vscode.cmake-tools",
            "compileCommands": "${fileWorkspaceFolder}/build/compile_commands.json"  
        }
    ],
    "version": 4
}

You can also do something like this in the CMakeLists.txt

IF(EXISTS "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/compile_commands.json")
  EXECUTE_PROCESS(COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E create_symlink "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/compile_commands.json" "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/compile_commands.json")
  message(STATUS "******* symlinks generated *******")
else()
  message(WARNING "**** please rerun the cmake command to generare files for vscode autocomplete! ****") 
ENDIF()

Note: You may need to rerun the cmake command (e.g. cmake ../ from build directory) if you don’t see the symlink in the project root.

You can also set the intelliSense mode to clang-arm64 e.g. "intelliSenseMode": "linux-clang-arm64"

However with compileCommands correctly set and and intelliSense database set (reset the intelliSense database and see before major changes if you think it is somehow corrupted)

Integrated Shell Settings for remote machines

The settings file can be usually found on ~/.vscode-server/data/Machine/settings.json

This is my custom profile (named gbash)

{
    "terminal.integrated.automationProfile.linux": {
    "path": "/bin/bash --login"
    },
    "terminal.integrated.profiles.linux": {
        "gbash": {
            "path": "/bin/bash --login -c",
            "icon": "terminal-bash"
        },

    },
    // "terminal.integrated.shell.linux": "/bin/bash --login -c",

    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux":"gbash"
}

{
    "terminal.integrated.automationProfile.linux": {
        "path": "/bin/bash --login -c"
    },
    "terminal.integrated.profiles.linux": {
        "gbash": {
            "path": "/bin/bash --login -c",
            "icon": "terminal-bash"
        }
    },
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "gbash",
    "editor.fontLigatures": false,
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.osx": ""
}

More info on this can be found on defaultSettings.json here is an excerpt

    // The default profile used on Linux. This setting will currently be ignored if either `terminal.integrated.shell.linux` or `terminal.integrated.shellArgs.linux` are set.
    //  - null: Automatically detect the default
    //  - sh: $(terminal) sh
    // - path: /bin/sh
    //  - bash: $(terminal-bash) bash
    // - path: /usr/bin/bash
    //  - bash (2): $(terminal) bash (2)
    // - path: /usr/bin/bash
    //  - rbash: $(terminal) rbash
    // - path: /bin/rbash
    //  - rbash (2): $(terminal) rbash (2)
    // - path: /usr/bin/rbash
    //  - dash: $(terminal) dash
    // - path: /bin/dash
    //  - dash (2): $(terminal) dash (2)
    // - path: /usr/bin/dash
    //  - JavaScript Debug Terminal: $($(debug)) JavaScript Debug Terminal
    // - extensionIdentifier: ms-vscode.js-debug
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": null,

Basically this means that at the time of writing “terminal.integrated.shell.linux” has precedence. When examining the default.Settings.json we can see that there is no default setting ("terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": null,). Therefore we can create "terminal.integrated.profiles.linux" set a custom profile as gbash and then assign it with “terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux”:”gbash”. After doing this I did not get any errors when trying to run interactively.

"terminal.integrated.shell.linux": "/bin/bash --login -c",

determines what the shell executable command is.

Troubleshooting

The terminal process failed to launch: Path to shell executable "/bin/bash --login c" does not exist.

This may happen even if you correctly set the settings file in the remote container this may be a bug)

• goto: File > Preferences > Settings
• Click on Terminal
• Scroll to Integrated > Default profile: Linux
• set it to bash (usually default value is None)
• then again in remote settings you will notice that the integrated profile is now changed to bash

For me at this point the error goes away and If I have set the gbash profile definition as above I change the value from bash to gbash`. However I’m not sure if this makes any effect.

click on Terminal

Read this article for more info on debugging indexer errors by fixing IntelliSense bugs.