In-Editor Documentation for CMake in Visual Studio

Erika

April 15th, 2019

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 1 introduces in-editor documentation for CMake commands, variables, and properties. You can now leverage IntelliSense autocompletionand when editing a CMakeLists.txt file, which will save you time spent outside of the IDE referencing documentation and make the process less error-prone. If you are just getting started with our native support for CMake, head over to our CMake Support in Visual Studio . You can use CMake to target multiple platforms from the comfort of a single IDE.

Quick info

Visual Studio now provides tooltips for CMake commands, variables, and properties based on official CMake documentation. The tooltip appears when hovering over a command, variable, or property name and includes the definition (with optional arguments) and a quick description. Below is the quick info seen when hovering over the add_subdirectory project command.

IntelliSense completion

Visual Studio16.1 also improves completion behavior in CMakeLists.txt and provides suggestions for documented CMake commands, variables, and properties. Below are the completion suggestions and tooltips provided when setting the CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD using the set command and CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD variable.

Give us your feedback!

Thank you for taking the time to provide the feedback that we use to shape Visual Studio 2019 into the best developer environment for you. We’d love for you to download and give it a try. We can be reached via the comments below or via email (visualcpp@microsoft.com). If you encounter other problems with Visual Studio or MSVC or have a suggestion, you can use the Report a Problem tool in Visual Studio or head over to the Visual Studio Developer Community. You can also find us on Twitter (@VisualC).