make2IntelliSense for VSCode C/C++ & Linux kernel development

Python scripts converting makefile into C/C++ extension configuration files to make IntelliSense work better, also disable file indexing listed in .gitignore.

Inspired by the brutal way introduced in Stupid Python Tricks: VSCODE c_cpp_properties.json for Linux Kernel Development, I modify several parts to make it more useful. Plus a script to keep VSCode out of indexing object files, which the files are usually meaningless for indexing and slow down VSCode. I may keep updating this repository in the future if needed.

In current version, I customize some properties to better fit your machine, the following properties will be auto detected.

• include path of...
  • workspace folder
  • linux kernel header
  • compiler library
• macro defines, including
  • normal define
  • macros with value
• compiler path
• language standard

Always feel free to modify and give your patch :)

Requirement

• Linux environment
• If you're developing linux kernel module, then make sure you have installed a proper linux-header
  • You may use uname -r command to check if it exists.
• make command
• (optional) A proper Makefile file in your target directory for compiling you project
• (optional) A proper .gitignore file in your target directory for git

Usage

1. Clone repository

2. Run make script as

   make TAR_DIR=YOU_TARGET_DIRECTORY

   For example, if you clone linux repository into directory ~/repos/linux, then you may type:

   make TAR_DIR=~/repos/linux

Done :), you'll see your customized c_cpp_properties.json and settings.json files under .vscode in you target directory.

To remove generated configuration files, use make clean (of course you can add TAR_DIR parameter).

Trouble shooting

About file exclusion and .gitignore

If you don't have .gitignore file, you can also run the script to generate settings.json. There are two options about file exclusion, COPY_GIT_IGNORE and USE_GIT_IGNORE. The following table shows their difference.

option	method	default
COPY_GIT_IGNORE	Set excluding files by copy ignored filenames according to .gitignore (it's ok if .gitignore not exist) with default ignorant and specified-file bypassing	V
USE_GIT_IGNORE	Set excluding files by VSCode explorer.excludeGitIgnore option

For COPY_GIT_IGNORE case, I introduce two more parameters in gen_file_exclude.py: replace for replacing some glob pattern into what we specified and bypass to skip excluding some files. For now, I replace .* glob pattern into .[^v]* and bypass .vscode not to hide .vscode directory, which is a bit unnatural for a VSCode user.

For example, if you want to exclude files following .gitignore, you can

make OPT=USE_GIT_IGNORE

such as

make TAR_DIR=~/repos/linux OPT=USE_GIT_IGNORE

Notice that in this case, the result will accidentally be the same since linux ignores all .* files and I haven't figure out a better way to bypass some .* files. If you have any idea, please contact my :)

Make dependency issue

If you encounter some dependency issue, that is, if make command invoked by gen_c_cpp_properties.py stuck because lost of previous object files, then you can edit MODE variable in Makefile to use real make process for c_cpp_properties.json generation.

To enable real make process, set MODE to empty space like:

make TAR_DIR=YOU_REPO_DIRECTORY MODE= 

For example, if you're again setting linux developing environment, than you can use the following command.

make TAR_DIR=~/repos/linux MODE= 

Fail to parse after make

If you've run make inside target directory before running make of this repo's, you may sometimes got a wrong result since files are all made, so there will be no more making output to catch and parse. In this case, you can first make clean inside target directory, then run make in this repo again.