Compiling CUDA File in VS Code [A How-To Guide]

Trying to compile a

.cu

file is not supported in the VS Code natively. This can be a issue if you want to compile and debug (atleast the CPU part of the file as kernel debugging is not supported in VS Code at the moment).

The procedure to do that is fairly simple. In your project, hit

F5

. That will give the below pop-up.

On selecting

C++(GDB/LLDB)

, we'll get default options (assuming compilers and debuggers are available on path).

Choose one of the option. I go for

g++-7

. This will create

launch.json 

and

task.json

. More information about the purpose of these files can be found here

However at this point if you try to compile a

.cu

file with this, that won't work as the default compiler chosen (if gcc) won't understand CUDA extensions. Thus open

task.json

Change command to

nvcc

(assuming you have it on path).

Post this try building and debugging a

cu

file with a break-point set. It should build successfully and you should be able to debug the CPU part of the code.