Understand how to use Visual Studio Code on Windows and Linux for C++ development with conda/mamba/pixi

[traversaro]

At the moment, everyone in the lab using Visual Studio Code with conda/mamba is actually launching code in a terminal in which the environment has been activated. This is cumbersome and complex, it would be great to find an alternative.

Past research on the topic:

• https://gitter.im/RoboStack/Lobby?at=6377930715a3885c70f88709
• This part of code of the ROS Visual Studio code extension: https://github.com/ms-iot/vscode-ros/blob/814a8ef20ec8c04aa71fc6b01b021df78570ba35/src/ros/utils.ts#L15-L47 seems to be relevant.

[traversaro]

Ok, I think I found a way, still not super ergonomic but it is working:

• Install https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=corker.vscode-micromamba
• Ctrl+Shift+P --> Micromamba: Activate environment by path --> Pass the folder of the environment you want to open, if you just created it via mamba C:\Users\straversaro\AppData\Local\miniforge3\envs\<name> or C:\Users\straversaro\AppData\Local\mambaforge\envs\<name> on Windows, and /home/traversaro/miniforge3/envs/<name> or /home/traversaro/mambaforge/envs/<name> on Linux
• Then I configured a CMake project with "[Unspecified]", and all the CMake dependencies have been found correctly.

[traversaro]

This comment prefix-dev/pixi#411 (comment) is related. They refer to https://github.com/direnv/direnv-vscode, and indeed a possible workaround/workflow is to define a direnv's .envrc file that activates the conda environment?

[traversaro]

I did some quick tests, on Linux the direnv extension work really well, even if you just installed direnv and you did not hooked it to your shell, CMake extensions then find all the C++ dependencies in the conda/pixi environment.

Instead on Windows I was not able to make direnv to work, apparently there are still some issues on the Windows side:

• Not working on Windows using Powershell direnv/direnv#1214

[giotherobot]

Cool! We maybe want to update the suggested extensions to include this then.