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The VS Code xPack Frequently Asked Questions

When opening xPack projects using CMake for the first time, VS Code asks for a kit:

CMake kits

Select Unspecified, since kits are not used by the xPack extension.

The C/C++ extension, which parses the .vscode/c_cpp_properties.json file, has a way of selecting one of the configurations (like debug/release), for IntelliSense to know which compile_commands.json to parse.

VS Code shows the active configuration name on the status bar, and it can be changed from there.

For managed projects, IntelliSense needs a file called compile_commands.json to know how to parse the project. One such file is expected in each build folder, and the system build generator (CMake/meson/etc) automatically creates these files when the project is prepared, like during the first build.

VS Code does not know about project folders, it knows only about workspace folders. If the goal is to work with multiple project folders, create a workspace and add all project folders to it (more info).