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If you haven't downloaded and installed Visual Studio and the Microsoft C/C++ tools yet, here's how to get started.

With the addition of the C/C extension to Visual Studio Code, you might have what is needed in a small, cross-platform editor. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight editor for coding on Windows, Linux, or the MacOS. More specifically, it targets Windows 7 or later, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mac OS 10.9 or later. Question: I Need C Programming Code For This Scenario And Flowchart As Well. Code Should Run In Microsoft Visual Studio Code Should Run In Microsoft Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2019 Installation

Welcome to Visual Studio 2019! In this version, it's easy to choose and install just the features you need. And because of its reduced minimum footprint, it installs quickly and with less system impact.

Note

This topic applies to installation of Visual Studio on Windows. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight, cross-platform development environment that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. The Microsoft C/C++ for Visual Studio Code extension supports IntelliSense, debugging, code formatting, auto-completion. Visual Studio for Mac doesn't support Microsoft C++, but does support .NET languages and cross-platform development. For installation instructions, see Install Visual Studio for Mac.

Want to know more about what else is new in this version? See the Visual Studio release notes.

Ready to install? We'll walk you through it, step-by-step.

Step 1 - Make sure your computer is ready for Visual Studio

Before you begin installing Visual Studio:

1. Check the system requirements. These requirements help you know whether your computer supports Visual Studio 2019.

2. Apply the latest Windows updates. These updates ensure that your computer has both the latest security updates and the required system components for Visual Studio.

3. Reboot. The reboot ensures that any pending installs or updates don't hinder the Visual Studio install.

4. Free up space. Remove unneeded files and applications from your %SystemDrive% by, for example, running the Disk Cleanup app.

For questions about running previous versions of Visual Studio side by side with Visual Studio 2019, see the Visual Studio 2019 Platform Targeting and Compatibility page.

Step 2 - Download Visual Studio

Next, download the Visual Studio bootstrapper file. To do so, choose the following button to go to the Visual Studio download page. Select the edition of Visual Studio that you want and choose the Free trial or Free download button.

Step 3 - Install the Visual Studio installer

Run the bootstrapper file you downloaded to install the Visual Studio Installer. This new lightweight installer includes everything you need to both install and customize Visual Studio.

1. From your Downloads folder, double-click the bootstrapper that matches or is similar to one of the following files:

   • vs_community.exe for Visual Studio Community
   • vs_professional.exe for Visual Studio Professional
   • vs_enterprise.exe for Visual Studio Enterprise

   If you receive a User Account Control notice, choose Yes to allow the bootstrapper to run.

2. We'll ask you to acknowledge the Microsoft License Terms and the Microsoft Privacy Statement. Choose Continue.

Step 4 - Choose workloads

After the installer is installed, you can use it to customize your installation by selecting the workloads, or feature sets, that you want. Here's how.

1. Find the workload you want in the Installing Visual Studio screen.

   For core C and C++ support, choose the 'Desktop development with C++' workload. It comes with the default core editor, which includes basic code editing support for over 20 languages, the ability to open and edit code from any folder without requiring a project, and integrated source code control.

   Additional workloads support other kinds of development. For example, choose the 'Universal Windows Platform development' workload to create apps that use the Windows Runtime for the Microsoft Store. Choose 'Game development with C++' to create games that use DirectX, Unreal, and Cocos2d. Choose 'Linux development with C++' to target Linux platforms, including IoT development.

   The Installation details pane lists the included and optional components installed by each workload. You can select or deselect optional components in this list. For example, to support development by using the Visual Studio 2017 or 2015 compiler toolsets, choose the MSVC v141 or MSVC v140 optional components. You can add support for MFC, the experimental Modules language extension, IncrediBuild, and more.

2. After you choose the workload(s) and optional components you want, choose Install.

   Next, status screens appear that show the progress of your Visual Studio installation.

Tip

At any time after installation, you can install workloads or components that you didn't install initially. If you have Visual Studio open, go to Tools > Get Tools and Features.. which opens the Visual Studio Installer. Or, open Visual Studio Installer from the Start menu. From there, you can choose the workloads or components that you wish to install. Then, choose Modify.

Step 5 - Choose individual components (Optional)

If you don't want to use the Workloads feature to customize your Visual Studio installation, or you want to add more components than a workload installs, you can do so by installing or adding individual components from the Individual components tab. Choose what you want, and then follow the prompts.

Step 6 - Install language packs (Optional)

By default, the installer program tries to match the language of the operating system when it runs for the first time. To install Visual Studio in a language of your choosing, choose the Language packs tab from the Visual Studio Installer, and then follow the prompts.

Change the installer language from the command line

Another way that you can change the default language is by running the installer from the command line. For example, you can force the installer to run in English by using the following command: vs_installer.exe --locale en-US. The installer will remember this setting when it's run the next time. The installer supports the following language tokens: zh-cn, zh-tw, cs-cz, en-us, es-es, fr-fr, de-de, it-it, ja-jp, ko-kr, pl-pl, pt-br, ru-ru, and tr-tr.

Step 7 - Change the installation location (Optional)

You can reduce the installation footprint of Visual Studio on your system drive. You can choose to move the download cache, shared components, SDKs, and tools to different drives, and keep Visual Studio on the drive that runs it the fastest.

Important

You can select a different drive only when you first install Visual Studio. If you've already installed it and want to change drives, you must uninstall Visual Studio and then reinstall it.

Step 8 - Start developing

1. After Visual Studio installation is complete, choose the Launch button to get started developing with Visual Studio.

2. On the start window, choose Create a new project.

3. In the search box, enter the type of app you want to create to see a list of available templates. The list of templates depends on the workload(s) that you chose during installation. To see different templates, choose different workloads.

   You can also filter your search for a specific programming language by using the Language drop-down list. You can filter by using the Platform list and the Project type list, too.

4. Visual Studio opens your new project, and you're ready to code!

Visual Studio 2017 Installation

In Visual Studio 2017, it's easy to choose and install just the features you need. And because of its reduced minimum footprint, it installs quickly and with less system impact.

Prerequisites

• A broadband internet connection. The Visual Studio installer can download several gigabytes of data.

• A computer that runs Microsoft Windows 7 or later versions. We recommend Windows 10 for the best development experience. Make sure that the latest updates are applied to your system before you install Visual Studio.

• Enough free disk space. Visual Studio requires at least 7 GB of disk space, and can take 50 GB or more if many common options are installed. We recommend you install it on your C: drive.

For details on the disk space and operating system requirements, see Visual Studio Product Family System Requirements. The installer reports how much disk space is required for the options you select.

Download and install

1. To download the latest Visual Studio 2017 installer for Windows, go to the Microsoft Visual Studio Older downloads page. Expand the 2017 section, and choose the Download button.

   Tip

   The Community edition is for individual developers, classroom learning, academic research, and open source development. For other uses, install Visual Studio 2017 Professional or Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise.

2. Find the installer file you downloaded and run it. The downloaded file may be displayed in your browser, or you may find it in your Downloads folder. The installer needs Administrator privileges to run. You may see a User Account Control dialog asking you to give permission to let the installer make changes to your system; choose Yes. If you're having trouble, find the downloaded file in File Explorer, right-click on the installer icon, and choose Run as Administrator from the context menu.

3. The installer presents you with a list of workloads, which are groups of related options for specific development areas. Support for C++ is now part of optional workloads that aren't installed by default.

   For C and C++, select the Desktop development with C++ workload and then choose Install.

4. When the installation completes, choose the Launch button to start Visual Studio.

   The first time you run Visual Studio, you're asked to sign in with a Microsoft Account. If you don't have one, you can create one for free. You must also choose a theme. Don't worry, you can change it later if you want to.

   It may take Visual Studio several minutes to get ready for use the first time you run it. Here's what it looks like in a quick time-lapse:

   Visual Studio starts much faster when you run it again.

5. When Visual Studio opens, check to see if the flag icon in the title bar is highlighted:

   If it's highlighted, select it to open the Notifications window. If there are any updates available for Visual Studio, we recommend you install them now. Once the installation is complete, restart Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2015 Installation

To install Visual Studio 2015, go to the Microsoft Visual Studio Older downloads page. Expand the 2015 section, and choose the Download button. Run the downloaded setup program and choose Custom installation and then choose the C++ component. To add C and C++ support to an existing Visual Studio 2015 installation, click on the Windows Start button and type Add Remove Programs. Open the program from the results list and then find your Visual Studio 2015 installation in the list of installed programs. Double-click it, then choose Modify and select the Visual C++ components to install.

In general, we highly recommend that you use the latest version of Visual Studio even if you need to compile your code using the Visual Studio 2015 compiler. For more information, see Use native multi-targeting in Visual Studio to build old projects.

When Visual Studio is running, you're ready to continue to the next step.

Next Steps

The C# support in Visual Studio Code is optimized for cross-platform .NET Core development (see working with .NET Core and VS Code for another relevant article). Our focus with VS Code is to be a great editor for cross-platform C# development.

VS Code supports debugging of C# applications running on either .NET Core or Mono.

For detailed instructions on:

• .NET Core debugging - see the Microsoft C# extension's GitHub page.
• Mono debugging - see the Mono Debug extension's README.

Note:VS Code has limited support for debugging applications running on the Desktop .NET Framework.

Due to this focus, many standard C# project types are not recognized by VS Code. An example of a non-supported project type is an ASP.NET MVC Application (though ASP.NET Core is supported). In these cases, if you want to have a lightweight tool to edit a file - VS Code has you covered. If you want the best possible experience for those projects and development on Windows in general, we recommend you use Visual Studio Community.

Installing C# support

C# language support is an optional install from the Marketplace. You can install it from within VS Code by searching for 'C#' in the Extensions view (⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)) or if you already have a project with C# files, VS Code will prompt you to install the extension as soon as you open a C# file.

Roslyn and OmniSharp

Visual Studio Code uses the power of Roslyn and OmniSharp to offer an enhanced C# experience. We offer support for:

• .NET Core projects
• MSBuild projects
• C# scripts (CSX)

On startup the best matching projects are loaded automatically but you can also choose your projects manually. The status bar will show what projects have been loaded and also allows you to select a different set of projects. To do so, click on the status bar projects item and select Change projects…. In the image below a single project has been picked up:

The available options include:

• Selecting a project.json file will open a .NET Core project and VS Code will load that project plus the referenced projects.
• Selecting a *.sln file opens a MSBuild-project. It will load the referenced *.csproj projects and sibling or descendant project.json files but no other project files that are referenced from the solution file.
• Selecting a folder will make VS Code scan for *.sln, project.json and *.csx files (C# scripts) and VS Code will attempt to load them all.

Once the project is loaded the enhanced experiences light up..

Editing Evolved

There is a lot to discover with C# and the editor, such as format on type, IntelliSense, the rename-refactoring, etc.

For a full description of our editing features, go to the Basic Editing and Code Navigation documentation.

Here are a few highlights..

IntelliSense

IntelliSense just works: hit ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space) at any time to get context specific suggestions.

Snippets for C#

We have several built-in snippets included in VS Code that will come up as you type or you can press ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space) (Trigger Suggest) and we will give you a context specific list of suggestions.

Tip: You can add in your own User Defined Snippets for C#. Drivers telechips. Take a look at User Defined Snippets to find out how.

Search for Symbols

There are also features outside the editor. One is the ability to search for symbols from wherever you are. Hit ⌘T (Windows, Linux Ctrl+T), start typing, and see a list of matching C# symbols. Select one and you'll be taken straight to its code location.

CodeLens

Another cool feature is the ability to see the number of references to a method directly above the method. Click on the reference info to see the references in the Peek view. This reference information updates as you type.

Note: Methods defined in object, such as equals and hashCode do not get reference information due to performance reasons.

Tip: You can turn off references information displayed in CodeLens with the editor.codeLenssetting.

Find References/Peek Definition

You can click on the references of an object to find the locations of its use in place without losing context. This same experience works in reverse where you can Peek the definition of an object and see it inline without leaving your location.

Quick Fixes / Suggestions

There are some basic quick fixes supported in VS Code. You will see a lightbulb and clicking on it, or pressing ⌘. (Windows, Linux Ctrl+.) provides you with a simple list of fixes/suggestions.

Next steps

Read on to find out about:

C Programming In Vs Code

• .NET Core Development - get up and running with cross-platform .NET
• Basic Editing - Learn about the powerful VS Code editor.
• Tasks - Use tasks to build your project and more.
• Debugging - Find out how to use the debugger with your project.
• Unity development - Learn about using VS Code with your Unity projects.

Common questions

My Project won't load

VS Code only supports a limited set of project types (primarily .NET Core). For full .NET project support, we suggest you use Visual Studio Community.

IntelliSense is not working

This is typically as a result of the current project type not being supported. You can see an indication in the OmniSharp flame in the bottom left hand side of the status bar.

Visual Studio Code C Programming Ubuntu

How do I build/run my project?

VS Code supports tasks for build and natively understand the output of MSBuild, CSC, XBuild. Find out more in the Tasks documentation.

I'm missing required assets to build and debug C# in VS Code. My debugger says 'No Configuration'

C Programming In Visual Studio

The Visual Studio Code C# extension can generate the assets you need to build and debug. If you missed the prompt when you first opened a new C# project, you can still perform this operation through the Command Palette (View > Command Palette) by typing '.NET', and running .NET: Generate Assets for Build and Debug. This command will generate the necessary launch.json and tasks.json configuration files (under the .vscode folder).