Basic Template for wxWidgets on Windows 10 Visual Studio Code

Since I found this to be a bit of a nightmare, I thought I'd put down the process I went through to set up wxWidgets in VSCode. I'll first go through setting up C++ and MinGW, then downloading and building wxWidgets and finally setting it up for VSCode. There are a variety of sources for doing all this online and I'll link all the ones I used here.

Setting up C++

Using GCC with MinGW

First off I started here, the instructions are easy enough to follow.

1. Go to extensions in VSCode and search C++
2. Click the C/C++ extension by microsoft (should be the top one) and click install
3. Click the "Click here" on the link to download the MSYS2 installer

MSYS2 Website

4. You are then instructed to go to the MSYS2 website (above link) for installing Mingw-w64
5. Run the installer you just downloaded
6. Specify your installation folder and press next till the installation is complete
7. Tick the box for opening MSYS2 64bit Wizard and click finish
8. When it opens first run pacman -Syu inputing Y whenever prompted
9. Once it's done it'll then close
10. Search MSYS from the start menu and open MSYS2 MSYS
11. Once it opens run pacman -Su entering Y when prompted
12. After this all done then run pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain press enter to install all packages (this is one of the bits that tripped me up there's no probably about it you need to do this to actually install the compiler)

With that we're done with MSYS2, next you need to add the compiler path to the system environmental variables. They go through this on the VSCode website you were on before the MSYS2 website.

13. Search "environment" from the start menu and select "Edit the system environment variables" (should be at the top)
14. Click the "Environment Variables..." button (bottom right corner)
15. Find the "Path" variable (there should be two one under user variables and the other under system variables, I updated both), click on it then click "Edit..."
16. Now you want to find the bin folder for MinGW64 which you just installed and copy it (the path should look something like this C:\msys64\mingw64\bin where C:\msys64 was my installation folder)
17. Back with editing the "Path" variable, click "New" and paste the path to the bin folder you just copied
18. Then click "OK" to finish up

The VSCode website then goes through setting up VSCode and checking the installation worked. I found it helpful but I'll cover all that later. Firstly, I'd restart your device to make sure everything updates correctly. I didn't and didn't realise there was an issue for quite a while since gFortran also has a g++ compiler (no, I didn't know initally and yes, this cleared up alot of my initial confusion as to why this was all necessary).

Setting up wxWidget

So now for downloading and building wxWidgets. It mentions there are a few prebuilt binaries but it recommends building from source which is what I'll go through here.

wxWidgets download page

1. There are a few different releases shown on the download page (I downloaded the latest one 3.1.5), pick one and download the "Windows ZIP" file from the "Source Code" section
2. You then want to extract the ZIP to any directory (I created a C++\wxWidgets315 folder in Documents) this will possibly take a few minutes
3. You then want to create another enironment variable containing the full path to the directory you extracted the ZIP file to (follow point 13 and 14 from the previous section)
4. Under the systems variables section select "New..."
5. For the variable name input WXWIN and for the value copy in the full path to your wxWidgets directory. Then press "OK" to finish up.

Building wxWidgets

I then followed the instructions from here for the most part.

6. Search "cmd" from the start menu and open the "Command Prompt" (should be at the top)
7. cd into the directory you extracted the ZIP file to (cd %WXWIN% should do it if the environment variable is set up properly).
8. Next cd .\build\msw
9. Then to build the library you want to input mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc SHARED=1 UNICODE=1 BUILD=debug, this will build a dynamic debug library.
10. If this works properly it should take ages. So now all you have to do is wait (or find somthing to do like have breakfast/lunch/dinner, go for a walk, read a book, clean a bathroom)

If there are any errors at this stage, try rebuilding or restarting your device then rebuilding. You can also clean it by appending clean to the command mentioned in this sections point 9 and then build again.

11. To build the release verion of the library just run mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc SHARED=1 UNICODE=1 BUILD=release where BUILD is changed from debug to release

That should be everything for downloading and building wxWidgets from source. This should create a DLL under lib\gcc_dll in the your wxWidgets directory. Inside this folder you should also find an mswud folder for the debug version and an mswu folder for the release version (and then a load of other stuff). Another wxWidgets site which also goes through different ways to build the library and lists all the different makefile parameters you can add. The method used here is under the "Using makefiles from Windows command line" section.

Setting up VSCode

So I briefly mentioned earlier that the VSCode website goes through some of this but I'll go through it all here. There was also a very useful video I found for this which I'll link here.

Setup a basic wxWidgets 3.1.3 project with VS Code and MinGW

This video was really helpful for setting things up. It goes through everything I mentioned here but uses CMake to build the wxWidgets libraries instead of the command line. I've set up this repository in almost exactly the same way they do in the video (minus the build folder containing the .dll files). I had a few warnings still upon finishing but I'll go through how I cleared them up here.

Before you start however you should set up your workspace, simply make three folders build, include and src. The include folder will contain all your header (.h) files and the src folder will contain all your C++ (.cpp) files. In the build folder create two more folders debug and release which will store the executables for the debug and release versions respectively. The corresponding core and base .dll files will go in both of these as well but I'll go through these in a bit. Your workspace should now look like the workspace from the video and this repository (plus a build folder).

Setting up tasks.json

1. Go to the "Terminal" tab at the top and click it, then go to the bottom of the drop down and click "Configure Default Build Task"
2. From the drop down from the command palette click on "C/C++:g++.exe build active file" (if there are multiple, select the one which states the compiler is mingw64\bin\g++.exe), this will create a "tasks.JSON" file

If nothing is showing up or you can't find the correct one, create a .cpp file and repeat points 1 and 2 from this section.

3. In the "tasks.json" file, change the label to Debug
4. Then in args under the -g flag change to ${workspaceFolder}\\src\\*.cpp
5. Next under the -o change the output file to ${workspaceFolder}\\build\\debug\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe
6. And now to add a variety of stuff
   • Add -I flag and then ${workspaceFolder}\\include under it
   • Add -I flag and then ${WXWIN}\\include under it
   • Add -I flag and then ${WXWIN}\\lib\\gcc_dll\\mswud under it
   • Then add an -L flag and ${WXWIN}\\lib\\gcc_dll under it
7. Now you want to go into the directory containing your wxWidgets build and go to \lib\gcc_dll in file explorer
8. Then you want to search "*core" and find a file named something like libwxmsw31ud_core.a. This is the debug version
9. Go back to "tasks.JSON" and add the -l flag, then under it copy the file name you just found and paste it in removing the extension and lib at the front (so it looks like wxmsw31ud_core)
10. While you're there copy the coresponding .dll file (wxmsw315ud_core_gcc_custom.dll) and paste it into your build\debug folder in your VSCode workspace
11. Repeat points 7 to 10 but instead search for "*base" (your looking for a file called libwxbase31ud.a and .dll file wxbase315ud_gcc_custom.dll)

That should be all for setting up "tasks.json" for the debug verion. If you have the release version copy the entire thing starting from the { before type to the } after detail and paste it in tasks after the debug version you just edited. Then change the label from Debug to Release and just remove the d in wxmsw31ud_core, wxbase31ud and ${WXWIN}\\lib\\gcc_dll\\mswud. Also change the output directory from ${workspaceFolder}\\build\\debug\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe to ${workspaceFolder}\\build\\release\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe and remove the -g flag at the beginning.

Setting up c_cpp_properties.json

12. Press Ctrl + Shift + P to open up the command palette and type in "C/C++" and find and click on "C/C++: Edit Configurations (UI)"
13. Change the "Configuration name" to something like "GCC"
14. Go down to the "Compiler path" section and click the drop down arrow
15. Scroll down and select mingw64\bin\g++.exe compiler
16. Then go down to "IntelliSense mode", click the drop down and select "windows-gcc-x64" (or whatever is appropriate)
17. Next, under the "Include path" section change ${workspaceFolder}/** to ${workspaceFolder}\include/**
18. Then add (on seperate lines) ${WXWIN}\include/** and ${WXWIN}\lib\gcc_dll/**
19. Finally, under the "Defines" section, add (on seperate lines) WXUSINGDLL and GCCVERSION (this will help fix a warning about not finding the correct source file later)

At this point everything should work fine although a warning along the line of can't find source ..\..\..\lib\vc_dll\wx\setup.h might be showing up. The default prefix used for the library set up this way is "vc", everything should however build and run fine if you have completed the above. But this is how I eventually got rid of this warning.

20. In the folder you extracted wxWidgets to go to %WXWIN%\include\msvc\wx and open the setup.h file there in Notepad
21. Your looking for the section the defines wxCOMPILER_PREFIX it should start on line 54 but you can just Ctrl + h and search for it that way
22. You want to go to a point right down the bottom of this section just before the #else statement (around line 87)
23. At this point between the #endif and #else statement add (no indentation) #elif defined(GCCVERSION) then on a new line (indent to be in line with the #endif just above) add #define wxCOMPILER_PREFIX gcc

This should clear up the warning since it will now look for ..\..\..\lib\gcc_dll\wx\setup.h instead of what it was previously looking for (and inevitably not finding).

Setting up launch.json

This isn't particularly necessary but is convenient, it just allows you to compile and then run the program by pressing F5.

24. Go to the "Run" tab at the top and click it, then from the drop down click on "Add Configuration..."
25. From the command palette drop down select "C++ (GDB/LLDB)" then click on "g++.exe - Build and debug active file" (make sure to select the one with the correct compiler mingw64\bin\g++.exe)

For some odd reason I had it list the MinGW compiler twice, one with \ and one with /. I have no idea why but it didn't seem to matter which one I picked.

26. This should open launch.json (if it comes up with an error just click "Abort"), at this point I changed name to just g++.exe - Build and debug
27. Change program to ${workspaceFolder}\\build\\debug\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe
28. Make sure that preLaunchTask is set to Debug (the task you set in tasks.json)

Now when you press F5 the program should build the debug version and then run the executable without having to use the terminal or going into file explorer.

And that's it, hopefully everything should be set up and working fine now. I believe I've covered all the points I had trouble with so hopefully you've found this helpful (if just a tad long).