How to debug a cmake/make project in VSCode?

Question

I'm making a project and in order to assist in building, I'm using CMake.

However, I notice that I can't debug.

Here's my launch.json:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Debug",
            "type": "gdb",
            "request": "launch",
            "target": "./build/bin/CHIP8",
            "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
            "preLaunchTask": "build"
        }
    ]
}

And here's my tasks.json:

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "build",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "cd build && cmake .. && make"
        }
    ]
}

I can't find anything online to help with this problem, so I'm really not sure where to go from here. VSCode docs has an example to debug where they use g++, but I'm using make --- so I'm not sure how to do it!

Thanks.

Solution 1

It seems you built release version of your program. Try to build debug version of your program.

rm -r build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
cmake --build .

It is better to separate debug and release builds.

mkdir Debug
cd Debug
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
cmake --build .

With appropriate update of launch.json:

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Debug",
            "type": "cppgdb",
            "request": "launch",
            "target": "./Debug/bin/CHIP8",
            "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
            "preLaunchTask": "build"
        }
    ]
}

Updated "type" according to VS Code updates. "type": "gdb" was previously

Solution 2

For my case, even I use cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .., it still cannot work, I need to set below flags in my cmakefile.

set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG "-g -DDEBUG")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG "-g -DDEBUG")

Comments

[Raleigh L.]

I tried this and I get an error saying: Configured debug type 'gdb' is not supported. Version info ------------------ Version: 1.63.2 Commit: 899d46d82c4c95423fb7e10e68eba52050e30ba3 Date: 2021-12-15T09:39:46.686Z Electron: 13.5.2 Chromium: 91.0.4472.164 Node.js: 14.16.0 V8: 9.1.269.39-electron.0 OS: Linux x64 5.13.0-25-generic snap

[273K]

@RaleighL. MS as always broke it with updates. Try "cppdbg". If it works I will update the answer.