But no AI generated image this time.

The problem seems to be with Electron which is the technology that drives VS Code.

Normally I use code or code . when I’ve opened a terminal and done a cd to the folder containing the project.

What fiuxes the VS Code crash with Error 5 is adding this on the end of the command

--js-flags="--nodecommit_pooled_pages"

so use either of these.

code --js-flags="--nodecommit_pooled_pages" or 

code . --js-flags="--nodecommit_pooled_pages"

I’ve tested it with my Pi 4 and it has been rock solid. The bug report and the fix are here on GitHub.

And the first thing I did after assembling it, was install VS Code and Rust.  And irritatingly, there’s some kind of a bug with the current version of VS Code. 1.97.

Open a project- say for a Rust application and view the source code. After a few seconds or so it crashes with a The window terminated unexpectedly (reason: ‘crashed’, code 5).

I also updated my Raspberry Pi 4B, installed Rust and got the same crash with it.

Thankfully Raspis come with grim which lets you do screenshots on Wayland.

Want to know if your system is running Wayland? From a terminal run this command:

echo “$XDG_SESSION_TYPE”

And you’ll either get wayland or x11.

So I hope the VS Code issue gets fixed soon.

First get the Keyboard Shortcuts form up. This is done by Ctrl K, Ctrl S. Jusr hold the control key down then press k then s. You should see this form appear.

Then type in Run B to have it filter and just show the Command we want to remap. Double click that first line and a popup will appear. Press the Scroll Lock key or some other key (warning, most seem to be used!)  and press enter and voila, it now compiles when you press the Scroll Lock key. Another possibility is the Pause key which is next to it.

We’ll start with you having already installed Clang (or GCC) and VS Code, and the C/C++ extension for VS Code (shown above). So make sure those are all done.

Start by defining a Folder for VS Code. VS code doesn’t use projects but it manages everything relative to the currently defined Folder.  It’ll ask you to open a folder initially. That’s where your source code etc will go. I created a folder called examples under my home folder and used that.

To compile anything C/C++ you also need two json files. These files are

• tasks.json
• c_cpp_properties.json

They are held in a hidden folder called .vscode in your current folder. Press F1 and you’ll see a popup menu. Type in C/C++ and you’ll see all the C/C++ items. Select C/C++: Edit Configurations (JSON). It’s highlighted below.

Now if you click that, and look in the folder examples you’ll see nothing but if you know how to view hidden files using the files utility (as shown below). Then you’ll see the folder .vscode.  On Raspberry Pi the file explorer always shows hidden files.

Now look in that folder and you’ll see c_cpp_properties.json.

Next we want tasks.json. On the Terminal menu, click the bottom item which is Configure Default Build Task

It’ll ask you to select the clang  build active task so click that and voila you now have tasks.json open in the editor.

Now I’ve created the standard hello world file in the file hw.c.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  printf("Hello world\n");
  return 0;
}

So just do Terminal/Run Build Task and it will have clang compile the currently opened file. If you get terminal failed to launch (exit code: -1) then it’s likely that your hello world source file was not the currently opened file in the editor. You can see which file is open because its tab is brightest.

Note that hw.c is brighter than tasks.json on the left. On the right, the open file is tasks.json and its tab is brighter.

So what are the json files for?

The c_cpp_properties.json lets you specify include file paths.  For instance if you have the SDL files installed, the include files are in /usr/include/SDL2

Note you can install SDL on linux by following these instructions.

The tasks.json file lets you specify which files are to be included and also linked.

Here I’ve just shown the args section from a tasks.json used to build SDL2 games.

	"args": [
		"-g",
		"${file}",
		"${workspaceFolder}/hr_time.c",
		"-o",
		"${fileDirname}/${fileBasenameNoExtension}",
		"-lSDL2",
		"-lSDL2_image",
		"-lSDL2_mixer",
		"-lm"
	],

The -g option includes files. The ${file} is the current opened file and {workspaceFolder{} specifies the current folder where the file hr_time.c (used for timing). The -l is for linking files and links SDL2, SDL2_image and SDL2_mixer.  The last -lm links math(s) code; technically the -l{name} flag tells the linker to link against lib{name}. So -lm links against libm, the c math library.

I was curious as to how many C extensions there are for VS Code. If you visit the marketplace (not a great name- all are free-some market!) in a browser, you can search through the (currently) 24,779 available extensions.

Finding C extensions is not easy. A search for C returns almost 16,000 results. C++  is a better thing to search on and gives 207 results, many of which are for C and C++. You can also search in VS Code but it’s easier in a web browser.

Even that’s probably too much but you can use the showing pull down to see how many extensions are in the various categories. If for instance you select Debuggers, then you will only see 18 extensions.

Note: As I’m still only my old creaky Ubuntu laptop, I had to use scrot for screen capture and gthumb for editing the image.  Note, the scrot project is looking for a programmer to look after it. Here is how to contribute to the project.

Only this time because I was doing other stuff I decided to create a Projects folder which contained the Asteroids folder and some other stuff and opened Projects as the Folder.  I copied the hidden .vscode folder into Projects/Asteroids and tried to compile. Errors. Lots of compile errors. I repeatedly edited the tasks.json file with altered paths but no joy. I spent an hour trying before closing the Folder and reopening it with Asteroids as the Folder and with the original tasks.json. It compiled perfectly.

So the moral of the tale is just keep the level of folders down to one when you open the Folder on the files you are compiling. Do not have subfolders.

It would have had the same problem had I let it. The problem is it when you install VS Code, it has some unmet dependencies and in fixing them it wants to remove 8 essential packages and this breaks apt which then gets in a funny state.

No one wants to see this scary message! So I think I may have to use the Code.headmelted.com version on Hyper-V for a while and see if this gets resolved with the next update of VS Code. Ah the jots of software development…

When I first started using it, the C++ extension, and configuring for C++, I got a tasks.json one which was suited for gcc, but recently when I install it, (and the C/C++ Extension for Visual Studio Code, the only choices seem to be these. What happened to the the ones for clang/gcc? The one on the right is what I’m expecting. Even with a C/C++ file open as the instructions here say, I’m getting the one on the left.

It’s possible that I’m getting this because I’m using the headmelted and VsCodium versions on a Raspberry Pi.

There’s a bit of a question mark about using the official extension on non-official build of Visual Studio. Headmelted allows it, but VsCodium has its own marketplace.

It’s easy enough to copy tasks.json over so not really a problem but just a minor irritation.

There are some subtle differences between it and Visual Studio Code. The main one is the not having access to the VisualStudio market place. The C/C++ template isn’t there but instead is installed by default.

However I have found that the tasks and launch json files created from the F1 menu don’t have the C++ choices. What this means is that you have to get them from an official Visual Studio source, like Visual Studio Code installed on 64-bit Windows/Ubuntu/Mac.

I’d already done this so I used WinSCP to send them via ssh from my Windows box to the Pi. It’s a slight irritation but once you’ve got them setup it works ok. I can build applications haven’t got debugging working yet though.

There is an alternate Extensions Marketplace which has 266 items in it.  That’s a screenshot of the programming language extensions.

As they say “This is not a fork. This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft’s vscode repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration.”

Microsoft’s code includes telemetry and tracking code. The code built here is the same as Microsoft’s but with that telemetry and tracking code removed. Also it includes builds for both ARM (32 and 64-bit) which you don’t get from Microsoft.

The Docs page provides info on how to copy JSON bindings from Visual Studio Code to VSCodium. I shall be giving this a try. Much as I like the code.headmelted.com Visual Studio Code, it doesn’t appear to be updated very often whereas VSCodium seems to be built every night.