Trouble Shooting

Most errors occur because of CMakePresets.json or CMakeSettings.json. I have proper samples available at https://github.com/elibroftw/cpp-vcpkg-cmake-example.

Software Prerequisties

• Anyone of the following IDEs
  • Visual Studio Code
  • Visual Studio 2022 if on Windows for the compiler
  • Any IDE that has pretty good CMake integration
  • Otherwise, you will need to use cmake yourself
• Any of the following compilers
  • Visual Studio 2022 if on Windows
  • gcc (Linux)
  • MSYS2/Mingw gcc (Windows)
  • clang (MacOS?)
• git

Installing CMake

You will need CMake 3.21+ in order to use the Visual Studio 2022 compiler through VSCode. The installer does most of the work, so you won’t have to manually add cmake to PATH.

For VS Code, you will need to install the “C/C++ Extension” and the “CMake Tools” extensions.

Installing Vcpkg

1. Clone vcpkg into a directory that won’t bother you in your day to day life
   • For me, that would be C:\Users\maste\Documents\GitHub\vcpkg
   • Use git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git or GitHub desktop
2. Run the Vcpkg bootstrap script
   • Windows: "./bootstrap-vcpkg" -disableMetrics
   • Unix: ./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh -disableMetrics
3. Modify environment variables
   • Add the vcpkg cloned directory to PATH
     • On Windows, use Windows search for “envir”
     • On Linux, open your .bashrc file and add export PATH=$PATH:~/vcpkg to your .bashrc file
   • Set VCPKG_ROOT as the same value you added to PATH
   • Set VCPKG_DEFAULT_TRIPLET to x64-windows on Windows, or your computers triplet
     • Valid architectures are: x86, x64, arm, arm64 and wasm32.
     • Valid OS names are 'windows', 'linux', 'macos' (I’m unsure about the macos part)
4. Enable vcpkg packages to be used in VS/MSBuild:
   • vcpkg integrate install
   • copy the path to vcpkg.cmake for use later

You can now install packages using vcpkg install <lib> and search for them using vcpkg search <lib>. In the next section, we’ll be integrating vcpkg within a CMake project.

Integrating Vcpkg into a new CMake Project

In this section we’ll be creating a CMake C++ project that will make an HTTP request using the cpr library.

1. Create a CMake project in Visual Studio or VSCode

   • Ensure IDE is configured to use CMakePresets.json
   • VS: open visual studio and click “Create a new project” and search for “CMake Project”
   • VSCode: open an empty folder in VSCode and use “CMake: Quick Start” from the command palette (Ctrl + Shift + P)

2. Setting the CMake toolchain file to vcpkg.cmake

   • Open CMakePresets.json example

   • Add the following under configurePresets[0] > cacheVariables

     "CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE": {
         "value": "$env{VCPKG_ROOT}/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake",
         "type": "FILEPATH"
     },
     

   • If using cmake from the command line on Linux, add -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$VCPKG_ROOT/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake

3. Create a vcpkg response file to maintain portability

   • Create vcpkg_rf.txt in the root directory with the contents:

   install
   cpr
   

4. Install dependencies using vcpkg "@vcpkg_rf.txt" [optional arguments]

5. For each library installed, you’ll see instructions for what to add or modify in your CMakeLists.txt

   • For cpr, that would be

    find_package(cpr CONFIG REQUIRED)
    target_link_libraries(PROJECT_NAME PRIVATE cpr::cpr)
   

   • For more than one library, you only need one target_link_libraries rather than one for each additional library

6. Now let’s code. In the main cpp file, type the following:

   #include <cpr/cpr.h>
   #include <iostream>
   
   int main()
   {
       cpr::Response r = cpr::Get(cpr::Url{ "https://api.github.com/repos/whoshuu/cpr/contributors" },
           cpr::Authentication{ "user", "pass" },
           cpr::Parameters{ {"anon", "true"}, {"key", "value"} });
       r.status_code;                  // 200
       r.header["content-type"];       // application/json; charset=utf-8
       r.text;                         // JSON text string
       std::cout << r.text << std::endl;
       return 0;
   }
   

7. Let’s test our build

   • If something doesn’t work, you may need to configure/delete CMake cache using your IDE or doing it manually
   • In Visual Studio, just click the green play button
   • In Visual Studio Code, you can use the “Build: Target” and select “run” from the command palette

If the steps didn’t work for you, you can follow this tutorial video. The video has an example of opening a project in VSCode that was made in Visual Studio.

Video