cannot open source file "begin_code.h" (dependency of "SDL2/SDL.h")

Question

When attempting to setup SDL2 with VS Code in Ubuntu 20.01 LTM I get the following VS Code error:

cannot open source file "begin_code.h" (dependency of "SDL2/SDL.h")

Any tips?

Answer 1

Just add "/usr/include/SDL2/" to your c_cpp_properties.json like so:

{
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Linux",
            "includePath": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/**",
                "/usr/include/SDL2/"
            ],
            "defines": [],
            "compilerPath": "/usr/bin/gcc",
            "cStandard": "gnu18",
            "cppStandard": "gnu++14",
            "intelliSenseMode": "gcc-x64"
        }
    ],
    "version": 4
}

Answer 2

in case you don't have the "c_cpp_properties.json" file in your folder.

Different answer than above, but I believe might be a better approach.

to create the c_cpp_properties.json on your workspace do the following:

1. ctrl + shift + p (opens the command palette)
2. search for "C/C++: Edit Configurations (JSON)" and click on it
3. "c_cpp_properties.json" file will be created on your workspace
4. add "/usr/include/SDL2/" to your "c_cpp_properties.json" like https://stackoverflow.com/a/64187964/8540466
5. reload C/C++ IntelliSense extension.

I'm assuming you already have the extension "C/C++ IntelliSense, debugging, and code browsing" installed on your vscode.

After these steps this problem was fixed for me.

Answer 3

If you, like me, don't have the c_cpp_properties.json file in your project, you can solve it by adding the following line to your settings.json (in VSCode, hit Ctrl+Shift+P and search for Open settings (JSON)):

{
    // ...
    "C_Cpp.default.includePath": ["/usr/include/SDL2", "${default}"],
    //...
}