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# Getting started
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# Configuring includePath for better IntelliSense results
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## Configuring includePath for better IntelliSense results
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This page describes how to configure include paths for folders containing C or C++ files to get the full IntelliSense experience. If you're seeing the following message when opening a folder in VS Code, it means the C++ IntelliSense engine needs additional information about the paths in which your symbols are located.
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This page describes how to configure include paths for folders containing C or C++ files to get better IntelliSense experience. If you're seeing the following message when opening a folder in VS Code, it means the C++ IntelliSense engine needs additional information about the paths in which your symbols are located.
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## Where to configure the include paths
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#### Where to configure the include paths
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When you open a folder, the extension will attempt to locate your system headers based on your operating system, but it does not know about any auxiliary libraries that your project depends on. You can specify the remaining paths by either using the `"C/Cpp: Edit Configurations"` command in the command palette, or by selecting `"Edit "includePath" setting"` in the lightbulb menu (see the screenshot below). The quickiest way to locate the lightbulb is to scroll to the top of the source file and click on any green squiggle, which usually shows up at the first line in the file).
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When you open a folder, the extension will attempt to locate your system headers based on your operating system, but it does not know about any auxiliary libraries that your project depends on. You can specify the remaining paths by either using the `"C/Cpp: Edit Configurations"` command in the command palette, or by selecting `"Edit "includePath" setting"` in the lightbulb menu (see the screenshot below). The quickiest way to locate the lightbulb is to scroll to the top of the source file and click on any green squiggle, which usually shows up at the first line in the file.
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This creates or opens a file called **c_cpp_properties.json** in the .vscode directory in the opened folder in your workspace. In this file, you can specify the paths to the headers that your project depends on. Look for the section where your current configuration is defined (by default there's one configuration per OS, such as "Win32 or "Mac"), and add your paths in the `"includePath"` setting and defines in the `"defines"` setting. For example, the following screenshot shows a snippet of the file specifying path for the Mac configuration.
If your build system is able to produce a compile_commands.json file, which can be auto-generated by build systems such as CMake and Ninja, the extension can get the information for the `"includePath"` and `"defines"` from that. Set the `"compileCommands"` property to the full path to your compile_commands.json file and the extension will use that instead of the `"includes"` and `"defines"` properties for IntelliSense.
You can either hover over the green squiggles to see the message in the tooltip, or open the Problems window to understand which headers the IntelliSense engine is unable to open.
To figure out which headers you need to specify paths for, you can either hover over the green squiggles to see the message in the tooltip, or open the Problems window to see the errors listed there. The error messsages show which headers the IntelliSense engine is unable to open - it could be the headers that are being included directly or the headers that the included headers are dependent on. The following screenshot shows an example of the error message being shown in the tooltip as well as the Problems window.
Manually configuring includes and defines could be time-consuming and sometimes cumbersome. It is recommended to try the following techniques to get the include paths setup automatically before resorting to manually configuring in the **c_cpp_properties.json** file.
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#### Use the lightbulb suggestions to auto-resolve includePath
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#### 1. Use the lightbulb suggestions to auto-resolve includePath
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You can also leverage the lightbulb path suggestions lightbulb to auto-resolve the included file. When you open a folder, the extension will **recursively** search for potential include paths that match the header files your code is using based on the paths set by the `"browse.path"` setting in **c_cpp_properties.json**. Click on the green squiggles under #include statements and a lightbulb will appear and offer suggestions of paths that will allow IntelliSense to resolve the included file.
#### Verify the include paths are correctly resolved
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#### 2. Use compile_commands.json file to supply includePaths and defines information
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If your build system is able to produce a compile_commands.json file, which can be auto-generated by build systems such as CMake and Ninja, the extension can get the information for the `"includePath"` and `"defines"` from that. Set the `"compileCommands"` property to the full path to your compile_commands.json file and the extension will use that instead of the `"includes"` and `"defines"` properties for IntelliSense.
## Verify the include paths are correctly resolved
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There are two ways to verify that the include paths are correctly resolved:
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This indicates that the IntelliSense engine has got the include paths resolved so you can start enjoying the full IntelliSense for your C or C++ code for the current translation unit. Note that you may still see errors on other files if they belong to a different translation unit that requires additional include paths to be configured.
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