vscode-cmake-tools/docs/configuration.md

Configuration

CMake tools has a good set of defaults for its configuration options. Here is a quick summary of options that can be tweaked, should you wish to do so:

• cmake.configureSettings sets additional options to be passed to the CMake command line when configuring the project. This should just be a mapping between keys and values. Each entry will correspond to a -D argument to CMake. Arrays will automatically be joined as semicolon-serperated strings.
• cmake.buildDirectory allows you to specify where CMake should generate its metadata and build files. The default, ${workspaceRoot}/build tells CMake Tools to configure into the build subdirectory of your projet. Use ${buildType} to set the build directory based on the CMake build type. For example, ${workspaceroot}/build/${buildType} will create subdirectories build/Debug, build/Release, etc. when you configure using those build types.
• cmake.installPrefix tells CMake Tools what to set for your CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX when you configure. This also supports variable substitutions. By default, CMake Tools will not specify a CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.
• cmake.parallelJobs tells CMake Tools how many jobs to pass to the command line of build tools and CTest. The default, zero, tells CMake Tools to automatically pick a good number based on the hardware parallelism available on the machine.
• cmake.ctest.parallelJobs allows you to override the parallelism just for running CTest. The default, zero, tells CMake Tools to use the same value as cmake.parallelJobs.
• cmake.parseBuildDiagnostics enables/disables the parsing of build diagnostics from the compiler. Default is enabled. You may want to disable this if another tool provides live diagnostics.
• cmake.sourceDirectory tells CMake Tools where the root CMakeLists.txt file is. The default is ${workspaceRoot}.
• cmake.saveBeforeBuild tells CMake Tools to save all open text documents after the build command is invoked, but before performing the build. This defaults to being enabled.
• cmake.buildBeforeRun Always build the target before running.
• cmake.preferredGenerator tells CMake Tools what CMake genertors to prefer. The first supported generator in this list is used when configuring a project for the first time. If a project is already configured, the generator will not be overriden by CMake Tools unless a Clean rebuild/reconfigure is invoked.
• cmake.generator tells CMake to skip the preferredGenerator logic and forcibly use the named generator.
• cmake.{configure,build,buildTool}Args allows passing of arbitrary strings as command line arguments to the respective configure/build step. Please do not use this option if another one of CMake Tools' options is sufficient. CMake Tools is better able to integrate with your build system when it can easily understand your project and its settings.
• cmake.toolset tells CMake to set the toolset argument when configuring the first time. (Not to be confused with toolchain files!)
• cmake.platform tells CMake to set the platform argument when configuring.
• cmake.clearOutputBeforeBuild clears the CMake/Build output channel before running the CMake build command. Default is enabled
• cmake.cmakePath allows you to specify a different CMake executable to use, rather than the default system one.
• cmake.experimental.enableTargetDebugging enables the experimental Target Debugging features
• cmake.debugConfig allows tweaking the options for debugging when using the Target Debugging feature.
• cmake.environment sets environment variables to be passed to cmake/build processes invoked by CMake Tools. These can be further refined:
• cmake.configureEnvironment sets environment for CMake configure
• cmake.buildEnvironment sets environment for build execution
• cmake.testEnvironment sets environment variables when running CTest
• cmake.mingwSearchDirs is a list of directories where CMake Tools will search for an installed MinGW environment. A search directory will match if it contains the bin/, include/, etc. directories with the MinGW binaries, headers, and libraries. There is currently one default search directory, C:\MinGW. If more than one directory in this list matches, each matching directory will be an available MinGW environment.