Force includes do not work if compile_commands is used

[cylonid]

Hi,
unfortunately the files specified in force includes are ignored if you use compile_commands.json for the include path.
Perhaps you can fix this for future releases.

My config:
VS Code 1.22.1
C/C++ ext 0.16.1
Ubuntu 16.04 x86-64

[sean-mcmanus]

It looks like this is "by design" -- the forced includes are taken from the compile_commands.json via -include or -FI arguments. Is that not sufficient for some reason?

[cylonid]

@sean-mcmanus I use a force-include because I need auto-completion on a global object. Since it is global, it is unsure whether the needed includes are present or not. If not, the auto-completion does not work without the forced include. I thought this would be a use case where one could use forced includes? At least it works like a charm when I don't use the compile_commands.json and stick with the manually specified include path.

[sean-mcmanus]

When you generate the compile_commands.json, it's supposed to add forced includes or whatever else is needed for compilation, therefore it is not expected for users with compile_commands.json to want to add additional forcedInclude paths, which is why we also ignore the includePath and defines. If your source file is not present in the compile_commands.json, then it'll fall back to using the forcedInclude setting.

[cylonid]

@sean-mcmanus Ok, now I see what you mean... In my case, the forced includes are not needed for compilation at all, so my compile_commands.json does not know about them. I only specified them inside c_cpp_properties.json because they are needed for proper auto-completion inside VSC. I was not aware that this use case could be unusual.

[bobbrow]

Can you tell us what exactly isn't working for auto-completion? Are system includes/defines missing? If you can share an entry from the compiler_commands.json for a file where things are not working properly, we might be able to figure out if there is a bug elsewhere since you shouldn't need to use forcedInclude with compile_commands.json.

[cylonid]

Actually this is a duplicate of my own issue #1699. My issue occurs because IntelliSense is limited to included headers, even with a compile_commands.json where the entry for the respective file includes the folder with the needed header.