Coding Corner How to use Terminal on the Mac when you have no idea where to start You may never have to visit macOS's command line, but if you're curious to learn more, here's what you need to know and some great tricks to explore. Coda is a powerful text editor designed with built-in support for working with both local and remote files. It also features a beautiful UI, a built-in debugger, web kit preview and inspector, a terminal, etc. Coda is available for Mac users at $99 and it has app versions for iPhone and iPad users. Coda – Code Editor 7. Use the Visual Studio debugger to quickly find and fix bugs across languages. The Visual Studio for Mac debugger lets you step inside your code by setting Breakpoints, Step Over statements, Step Into and Out of functions, and inspect the current state of the code stack through powerful visualizations.
Installation
- Download Visual Studio Code for macOS.
- Open the browser's download list and locate the downloaded archive.
- Select the 'magnifying glass' icon to open the archive in Finder.
- Drag
Visual Studio Code.appto theApplicationsfolder, making it available in the macOS Launchpad. - Add VS Code to your Dock by right-clicking on the icon to bring up the context menu and choosing Options, Keep in Dock.
Launching from the command line
You can also run VS Code from the terminal by typing 'code' after adding it to the path:
- Launch VS Code.
- Open the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) and type 'shell command' to find the Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH command.
- Restart the terminal for the new
$PATHvalue to take effect. You'll be able to type 'code .' in any folder to start editing files in that folder.
Note: If you still have the old code alias in your .bash_profile (or equivalent) from an early VS Code version, remove it and replace it by executing the Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH command.
Alternative manual instructions
Instead of running the command above, you can manually add VS Code to your path, to do so run the following commands:
Start a new terminal to pick up your .bash_profile changes.
Note: The leading slash is required to prevent $PATH from expanding during the concatenation. Remove the leading slash if you want to run the export command directly in a terminal.
Note: Since zsh became the default shell in macOS Catalina, run the following commands to add VS Code to your path:
Touch Bar support
Out of the box VS Code adds actions to navigate in editor history as well as the full Debug tool bar to control the debugger on your Touch Bar:
Mojave privacy protections
After upgrading to macOS Mojave version, you may see dialogs saying 'Visual Studio Code would like to access your {calendar/contacts/photos}.' This is due to the new privacy protections in Mojave and is not specific to VS Code. The same dialogs may be displayed when running other applications as well. The dialog is shown once for each type of personal data and it is fine to choose Don't Allow since VS Code does not need access to those folders. You can read a more detailed explanation in this blog post.
Updates
VS Code ships monthly releases and supports auto-update when a new release is available. If you're prompted by VS Code, accept the newest update and it will get installed (you won't need to do anything else to get the latest bits).
Note: You can disable auto-update if you prefer to update VS Code on your own schedule.
Preferences menu
You can configure VS Code through settings, color themes, and custom keybindings available through the Code > Preferences menu group.
You may see mention of File > Preferences in documentation, which is the Preferences menu group location on Windows and Linux. On a macOS, the Preferences menu group is under Code, not File.
Next steps
Once you have installed VS Code, these topics will help you learn more about VS Code:
- Additional Components - Learn how to install Git, Node.js, TypeScript, and tools like Yeoman.
- User Interface - A quick orientation around VS Code.
- User/Workspace Settings - Learn how to configure VS Code to your preferences settings.
Common questions
Why do I see 'Visual Studio Code would like access to your calendar.'
If you are running macOS Mojave version, you may see dialogs saying 'Visual Studio Code would like to access your {calendar/contacts/photos}.' This is due to the new privacy protections in Mojave discussed above. It is fine to choose Don't Allow since VS Code does not need access to those folders.
VS Code fails to update
If VS Code doesn't update once it restarts, it might be set under quarantine by macOS. Follow the steps in this issue for resolution.
Does VS Code run on Mac M1 machines?
Yes, VS Code supports macOS ARM64 builds that can run on Macs with the Apple M1 chip. Currently, only Insiders macOS ARM64 builds are available.
Are you a student who is learning C++, or a professional who has already been doing C++ coding perhaps on a corporate Linux system, and unsure where to start to transition to a Mac. Or, maybe you already write C++ in a Mac environment but want to explore some other options to improve your coding speed and efficiency.
So everything is clear, we are discussing here are Integrated Development Environments (IDE). An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software package which combines all the basic tools developers need to write and test software. An IDE will typically contain a code editor, a compiler or interpreter and a debugger that can be accessed.
This a quick guide to introduce some options and provide simple examples of how C++ coding can be accomplished on a Mac. We will look at what options are available on the Mac already and also some other IDEs that are available to use on a Mac. Different users will likely care about different features, but will we give you a rundown of each option. The final option is to use Linux on your Mac.
XCode
Apple's own free Xcode, a full-featured C++ IDE, is a good place to start for writing C++code on a Mac. XCode is actually designed specifically for developers to write macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS applications using Swift or Objective-C. If you already do iOS and MacOS development, then Xcode may be your best option for C++ as well.
However, it is not widely used professionally as a C++ development system, where primarily Linux and Java-based IDEs are used. Nonetheless, it does do a good job.
XCode includes a GUI debugger, and you can change the 'C++ Language Dialect', and use lldb
You can download it for free from Apple, using your Apple ID.
CLion
This popular IDE for C/C++ developer has been created by the well-known JetBrains. It is available on other platforms as well and is a respected tool.
It contains lots of useful functions which will help your developing, such as:
- Smart editor, with good code completion
- Embedded terminal
- A lot of configuration options, to set it up how you like
- Support for various languages and standards: C++, libc++, boost, JavaScript, XML, HTML and CSS
- Keyboard shortcuts so you can work faster – eg. add class members, override/implement functions, wrap a block of code with a statements
- Well automated refactoring
- Code analysis
- CMake support
- Visual Diff and VCS integration
Qt Creator
Qt is one of the most popular libraries. You can download the open source version for free. There is also a pro version of Qt available for purchase, which offers more features.
Coding On Mac Vs Pc
Qt designer is one outstanding feature of Qt Creator. It is for designing and building graphical user interfaces (GUIs) from Qt widgets. This is a really great choice if you want to create a GUI for your application. You can compose and customize the widgets, then test them using different styles and resolutions directly within the editor.
Other features:
- Qt Data Visualization
- Code editor has syntax highlighting and autocompletion.
- Qt Quick Compiler
- Boot to Qt
- Qt Quick 2D Renderer
- Qt WebView
- Qt Virtual Keyboard
- Clang is supported
- Visual debugging
Eclipse
This a good open source IDE, which is also available across multiple platforms and is more industry standard. It is completely free, which also makes it an attractive option. Intellicad for mac. It is very similar to Xcode, and you will need XCode and Java installed to use it.
- C/C++ development tools
- Eclipse Git team provider
- Mylyn Task List
- Remote system explorer
- A range of plugins is available. It has a good community of users, so a lot of good plugins have been developed.
However, you should be aware that you will need to set up some other things to be able to debug your code- described at StackOverflow.
Netbeans IDE
This a free multi-platform IDE. It has a lot of good features which can help you in development.
- Debugs your code, and points out errors, plus gives you hints for code optimization
- Autocomplete is very good and allows fast coding. The IDE will auto-complete your code (variable names / function references / library functions / classes / ids) wherever possible.
- Qt Toolkit support
- Remote development
- File navigation
- Compiler Configurations
Like Eclipse, Java has to be installed along with some specific C++ compilers. Best free mac apps 2017. You may need to do a bit of fiddling to get it up and running at first.
Java Coding On Mac
One other drawback is that it some users have reported that it can be memory heavy and slow.
Install Linux as a Virtual Machine on your Mac
If what you need is to do some serious C++ coding on a Mac, this is one final option you should not neglect to consider. It is a slightly more complex solution, but very satisfying and having access to Linux on your system has other advantages too. If you are already comfortable working in a Linux environment, this should not be a daunting option at all, but it undoubtedly does require more work than the other solutions here.
Since most professional C++ development is done in Linux along with its suite of GNU compilers and debugger, and Java-based IDEs, this is actually a very sensible solution. This way you will be able to use all the industry standard tools.
This option involves first acquiring a Virtual Machine system for your Mac, then install your Linux operating system of choice in that Virtual Machine. Once that is setup, you can really do anything you could possibly need in C++, get as complex as needed, and debug.
Coding On Mac Mini
The top two Virtual Machine programs to look at are Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. Both have been around for years and are stable and robust. We recommend trying Fedora or CentOS as your Linux installation because they are free and come with the required GNU compilers (g++) and debugger (gdb).
