VCPKG
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Vcpkg is a cross-platform package manager for C and C++ developers. It allows developers to quickly acquire and build open source libraries and share collections of private components. To get started with Vcpkg, follow these steps:
Clone the Vcpkg repository and run the bootstrapping script to produce the Vcpkg binary.
Install Vcpkg globally for MSBuild projects or clone it as a submodule for CMake projects.
Use find_package() to reference the libraries in your CMakeLists.txt files.
Use vcpkg commands to search, install, remove, list, update, and upgrade packages.
Verify that the installed libraries are discoverable by IntelliSense and usable in code without additional configuration.
For a more comprehensive guide on using Vcpkg, refer to the . If you encounter any issues, check the and on the Vcpkg GitHub repository.
To install vcpkg, follow these steps:
First, clone the vcpkg repository from GitHub using the following command:
Navigate to the vcpkg directory and run the bootstrap script to generate the vcpkg binary:
After the bootstrap script completes, you can install packages using the vcpkg install command. For example, to install the Boost library, run:
Optionally, you can add the vcpkg directory to your system PATH to be able to use the vcpkg command from any directory. On Windows, you can use the following command to add the vcpkg directory to your user PATH:
To link vcpkg with Visual Studio, you can follow these steps:
If you have installed Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 or later with the vcpkg component checked, you can use the copy of vcpkg that is included with Visual Studio. This copy of vcpkg supports manifests but does not support classic mode. To initialize it with the IDE, run vcpkg integrate install with administrator privileges from the Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio or Developer PowerShell for Visual Studio. This will enable MSBuild and CMake IDE integration with this copy of vcpkg.
If you have installed vcpkg manually, you can integrate it with Visual Studio using the vcpkg integrate install command. This command sets the user-wide vcpkg instance and displays CMake integration help. On Windows with Visual Studio 2015, this subcommand will add redirecting logic into the MSBuild installation which will automatically pick up each user's user-wide vcpkg instance. Visual Studio 2017 and newer have this logic in the box. This command also creates a few short files containing the absolute path to the vcpkg instance inside the user's user-wide configuration location.
In Visual Studio, you can then include the vcpkg libraries in your project by adding the appropriate #include statements and linking your project to the vcpkg-generated libraries. This can be done through the Visual Studio project properties or by manually editing the project file. For example, to link to the Boost library, you can add the following to your project file:
I've found that you might need to restart your computer before Visual Studio fully connects to vcpkg.
Alternatively, you can install vcpkg globally for MSBuild projects or as a submodule for CMake projects. For more information on installation and usage, refer to the official .
Note that vcpkg can also be installed using package managers such as on macOS and Linux.
If you want to statically link the vcpkg libraries to your project, you can configure Visual Studio to use the static libraries downloaded by vcpkg. To do this, you need to change the Runtime Library property of your project to Multi-threaded (/MT) for Release mode and Multi-threaded Debug (/MTd) for Debug mode. You can also set the VcpkgTriplet property in the project file to x64-windows-static to use the static libraries. For more information on static linking with vcpkg and Visual Studio, refer to .