1. To see all the files in the folder, select the **Show all files** button.


When you open a folder that uses CMake, Visual Studio automatically generates the CMake cache. This operation might take a few moments, depending on the size of your project. The status is displayed in the output window. When the operation is complete, it says "Target info extraction done".

After this operation completes, IntelliSense is configured, the project can build, and you can debug the application. Visual Studio also now understands the build targets that the CMake project produces and can now provide a logical view of the solution called CMake Targets View. Use the **Solutions and Folders** button in the **Solution Explorer** to switch to this view.


Here is what that view looks like for the Bullet SDK.

Targets view provides a more intuitive view of what is in this source base. You can see some targets are libraries and others are executables. You can expand these nodes and see the source that comprises them independent of how it's represented on disk.

a. select CommonRigidBodyBase that the struct BasicExample is derived from around line 30.

b. right-click and choose Go to Definition. Now you are in the header CommonRigidBodyBase.h.

c. In the browser view above, your source you should see that you are in the CommonRigidBodyBase. To the right, you can select members to examine. Click the drop-down and select mouseButtonCallback to go to the definition of that function in the header.

4. To launch the application, select the launch drop-down with the play icon that says "Select Startup Item" in the toolbar. In the drop-down select AppBasicExampleGui.exe. The executable name now displays on the Launch button:

6. Move your mouse into the application window, then click a button to trigger the breakpoint. This brings Visual Studio back to the foreground with the editor showing the line where execution is paused. You will be able to inspect the application variables, objects, threads, memory, and step through your code interactively using Visual Studio. You can click continue to let the application resume and exit it normally or cease execution within Visual Studio using the stop button.

What you have seen so far is by simply cloning a C++ repo from GitHub you can open the folder with Visual Studio and get an experience that provides IntelliSense, a file view, a logical view based on the build targets, source navigation, build, and debugging with no special configuration or Visual Studio specific project files. If you were to make changes to the source you would get a diff view from the upstream project, make commits, and push them back without leaving Visual Studio. There's more though. Let's use this project with Linux.

So far, you have been using the default x64-Debug configuration for our CMake project. Configurations are how Visual Studio understands what platform target it's going to use for CMake. The default configuration isn't represented on disk. When you explicitly add a configuration, a file called CMakeSettings.json is created that has parameters Visual Studio uses to control how CMake is run. To add a new configuration, select the Configuration drop-down in the toolbar and select **Manage Configurations…**

The Add Configuration to CMakeSettings dialog will appear.

Here you see Visual Studio has preconfigured options for many of the platforms Visual Studio can be configured to use with CMake. If you want to continue to use the default **x64-Debug** configuration that should be the first one you add. You want that for this tutorial so can switch back and forth between Windows and Linux configurations. Select **x64-Debug** and click **Select**. This creates the CMakeSettings.json file with a configuration for **x64-Debug** and switches Visual Studio to use that configuration instead of the default. You will see the configuration drop-down no longer says "(default)" as part of the name. You can use whatever names you like for your configurations by changing the name parameter in the CMakeSettings.json.

After you specify a configuration, Visual Studio adds a CMakeSettings.json file to the project where you can adjust values. To add a Linux configuration, right-click the CMakeSettings.json file in the **Solution Explorer** view and select **Add Configuration**. You see the same Add Configuration to CMakeSettings dialog as before. Select **Linux-Debug** this time, then save the CMakeSettings.json file. Now select **Linux-Debug** in the configuration drop-down.

Provide the connection information to your Linux machine and click **Connect**. Visual Studio adds that machine as to CMakeSettings.json as your default for **Linux-Debug**. It will also pull down the headers from your remote machine so that you get IntelliSense specific to that machine when you use it. Now Visual Studio will send your files to the remote machine, then generate the CMake cache there, and when that is done Visual Studio will be configured for using the same source base with that remote Linux machine. These steps may take some time depending on the speed of your network and power of your remote machine. You will know this is complete when the message "Target info extraction done" appears in the CMake output window.

Because this is a desktop application, you need to provide some additional configuration information to the debug configuration. In the CMake Targets view, right-click AppBasicExampleGui and choose Debug and Launch settings to open `launch.vs.json` that is in the hidden `.vs` subfolder. This file is local to your development environment. You can move it into the root of your project if you wish to check it in and save it with your team. In this file a configuration has been added for AppBasicExampleGui. These default settings work in most cases, as this is a desktop application you need to provide some additional information to launch the program in a way you can see it on our Linux machine. You need to know the value of the environment variable `DISPLAY` on your Linux machine, run this command to get it.

Now in order to launch and debug our application, choose the **Select Startup Item** drop-down in the toolbar and choose AppBasicExampleGui. Now press that button or hit **F5**. This will build the application and its dependencies on the remote Linux machine then launch it with the Visual Studio debugger attached. On your remote Linux machine, you should see an application window appear with the same falling bunch of cubes arranged as a single block.

Move your mouse into the application window, click a button, and the breakpoint will be hit. Program execution pauses, Visual Studio comes back to the foreground, and you will be at your breakpoint. You should also see a Linux Console Window appear in Visual Studio. This window provides output from the remote Linux machine, and it can also accept input for `stdin`. Like any Visual Studio window, it can be docked where you prefer to see it and its position will be persisted in future sessions.

You can inspect the application variables, objects, threads, memory, and step through your code interactively using Visual Studio. But this time on a remote Linux machine instead of your local Windows environment. You can click continue to let the application resume and exit normally, or you can press the stop button, just as with local execution.

Look at the Call Stack window and you will see this time the Calls to x11OpenGLWindow since Visual Studio has launched the application on Linux.

Advance to the next article to learn how to create...