Visual Studio Code Tasks

Sample tasks for VS Code

VS Code tasks automate command-line operations and make them available directly from the editor.

Visual Studio Code Documentation

Tasks

Procedure

1. Open the workspace directory in VS Code.
2. In the workspace root, create a .vscode directory if it does not already exist.
3. Inside .vscode, create a file named tasks.json.

Example

Hello World Program

Assume you have a simple C++ Hello World program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
  printf("\nHello!\n\n");
  return 0;
}

Sample tasks.json

This tasks.json file contains two tasks, one that compiles the file (compile-hello) and another that runs the executable (run-hello).

{ "version": "2.0.0"
, "tasks":
  [
    { "label": "compile-hello"
    , "type": "shell"
    , "command": "g++"
    , "args":
      [ "${workspaceFolder}/hello.cpp"
      , "-o"
      , "hello.out"
      ]
    , "presentation":
      { "close": true
      }
    , "problemMatcher": []
    }

  , { "label": "run-hello"
    , "type": "shell"
    , "command": "${workspaceFolder}/hello.out"
    , "dependsOn":
      [ "compile-hello"
      ]
    , "problemMatcher": []
    }
  ]
}

Key Descriptions

Key	Description
label	Name of the task.
command	Command to execute.
args	Arguments passed to the command.
presentation	Set "close": true to automatically close the task terminal when the task completes.
problemMatcher	Specifies how VS Code detects errors and warnings in task output and displays them in the Problems panel.. Set to [] to disable this behavior.
dependsOn	List of tasks that must run before this task.