so if we expand it, it will be equivalent to this /Users/'UserName'/Desktop/a.out What we did was telling the terminal the full path to the “a.out” executable, the period symbol “.” is a special character that refers to your current directory. In the Unix terminal, the way you run an executable is by providing the full path to it, and the terminal will run your program, hence the command.

That last command was /Users/'UserName'/hello The g++ is a compiler (just as clang++), so it asks g++ to compile hello.cpp and generate an executable output, however, it uses -o flag to set the generated executable name to “ hello” instead of the default name“ a.out”. the second command was: g++ hello.cpp -o hello This is exactly what we did before, the tilde character (~) that we used in “ ~/Desktop” actually expands to your home directory (your home directory is “/Users/”UserName”/) then ( /Desktop) to get to your CPP file location. The first thing we notice is, it’s running the cd command cd /Users/'UserName'/Desktop Note: the & is used to run multiple commands in order, in one line. Installing the command-line tools will install the clang compiler and it is a requirement to develop C++ regardless of IDE/Editor you choose.

Installing Xcode is not a requirement, but many libraries/projects assumes you have it, so I recommend to install it if you have enough space.

You understand C++ language needs to be compiled and linked.

Basic knowledge of the Unix terminal (I will walk you through it).

Via Spotlight (⌘Space) then type terminal and hit enter, within the new window type xcode-select -install

Install the command line tools using by opening your terminal.You have installed VScode on your machine.In part 3 I use CMake to work with large projects. Note: if you are familiar with VScode and C++ you may refer to the next part where I use tasks.json and launch.json for debugging and configuring your project. We start from the ground, running the simplest C++ program, then we add more complex files, automate the tasks and explore VScode along the way.

Compile c++ visual studio code mac