title: "Tutorial: Run and debug a CMake project on a remote machine"

ms.date: "11/20/2020"

This tutorial shows how to use Visual Studio C++ on Windows to create and build a CMake project than you can deploy and debug on a remote ARM64 Windows machine. The steps can be generalized to deploy and debug a CMake project that doesn't target ARM64.

This tutorial focuses on ARM64 because the default debugging experience for ARM64 is remote debugging. Attempting to debug ARM64 without configuring your CMake project as shown in this tutorial will result in an error that VS can't find the remote machine.

1. Run the Visual Studio Installer. If you haven't installed Visual Studio yet, see [Install Visual Studio](https://docs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/install/install-visual-studio?view=vs-2019#:~:text=Install%20Visual%20Studio%201%20Make%20sure%20your%20computer,...%204%20Choose%20workloads.%20...%20More%20items...%20)

- **C++ Cmake tools for Windows**

1. Install the ARM64 remote tools on the remote machine as described in [Download and Install the remote tools](https://docs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/debugger/remote-debugging-cpp?view=vs-2019&viewFallbackFrom=vs-2019%23download-and-install-the-remote-tools#download-and-install-the-remote-tools)

1. Follow the directions in [set up the remote debugger](https://docs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/debugger/remote-debugging-cpp?view=vs-2019&viewFallbackFrom=vs-2019%23download-and-install-the-remote-tools#BKMK_setup) on the remote ARM64 machine.

On the Windows host machine, run Visual Studio and choose **Create new project** > **CMake Project** > **Next**

Give the project a name and choose a location. Then select **Create**.

Because you are targeting an ARM64 Windows machine, you need to use the ARM64 build tools. To select the ARM64 build tools, select the Visual Studio **Configuration** dropdown and select **Manage Configurations...**

Change the **Configuration name** to **arm64-debug**. This is a unique, friendly name to make it easier for you to identify these settings.

Select the **Toolset** dropdown and from the list of build tools, choose **msvc_arm64_x64**. Your settings should look something like this:

- `projectTarget` : set to the name of your target, for example, `CMakeProject3.exe` You can check the

Before you run your CMake project, ensure that the Visual Studio 2019 remote debugger is running on the remote ARM64 machine. You may need to change the remote debugger options depending on your authentication situation.

From the VS Remote Debugger menu bar, select **Tools** > **Options**. Then set authentication to match how your environment is set up:

If you choose **No Authentication**, update the `launch.vs.json` file in your project by adding **"windowsAuthenticationType": "Remote Windows with No authentication"** to the `configurations` section `launch.vs.json`. For example:

Otherwise, `"windowsAuthenticationType"` defaults to `"Remote Windows authentication"` and doesn't need to be explicitly stated.

On the Visual Studio toolbar, use the startup item dropdown to change the startup item to match the name you specified for `"name"` in the `launch.vs.json` file:

To start debugging, on the VS toolbar choose **Debug** > **Start Debugging** (or press **F5**).

- `"name"` should match the selection in the VS startup item dropdown.

After the project builds, the app should appear on the remote ARM64 machine:


In this tutorial, you created a CMake project, configured it to build for ARM64 and to run on a remote machine. Then you built, ran, and debugged it on a remote ARM64 Windows machine.