[visual-studio-code] How do I set up Visual Studio Code to compile C++ code?

If your project has a CMake configuration it's pretty straight forward to setup VSCode, e.g. setup tasks.json like below:

{
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "command": "sh",
    "isShellCommand": true,
    "args": ["-c"],
    "showOutput": "always",
    "suppressTaskName": true,
    "options": {
        "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}/build"
    },
    "tasks": [
        {
            "taskName": "cmake",
            "args": ["cmake ."]
        },
        {
            "taskName": "make",
            "args" : ["make"],
            "isBuildCommand": true,
            "problemMatcher": {
                "owner": "cpp",
                "fileLocation": "absolute",
                "pattern": {
                    "regexp": "^(.*):(\\d+):(\\d+):\\s+(warning|error):\\s+(.*)$",
                    "file": 1,
                    "line": 2,
                    "column": 3,
                    "severity": 4,
                    "message": 5
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

This assumes that there is a folder build in the root of the workspace with a CMake configuration.

There's also a CMake integration extension that adds a "CMake build" command to VScode.

PS! The problemMatcher is setup for clang-builds. To use GCC I believe you need to change fileLocation to relative, but I haven't tested this.