Using Cpp17 or higher version of Cpp on Vscode extension Clangd

Recently I’ve switched my code completion tool in VScode from Microsoft’s official plugin to clangd. On the one hand, clangd can provide a better user experience, on the other hand, I also use this plugin in my company (Bytedance).

I joked to myself: Two of the most interesting things I learned when I interned at the company were that indentation changed from four spaces to two, and braces changed from wrap to no wrap.

Now, there is a problem. I installed clangd, switched over and everything worked fine. But when I use string_view, clangd told me it didn’t recognize this thing. I quickly realized that this is due to the fact that the default Cpp version of clangd is still 14. So changing its default version became something I had to do.

I googled but didn’t find any useful information.

I try to use compile_commands.json file. But on the one hand, it needs to be configured separately for each project, while the effect I expect is to use Cpp17 for any file that is opened at random. On the other hand, it turns out that it does not work. (maybe I didn’t configure it properly)

So, here is the final solution.

Open (create if not already there) ~/.config/clangd/config.yaml. and write the following information

1CompileFlags: 
2    Add: [-std=c++20]

Cool. Now let’s have fun with Cpp20.

Edit in 2023-10-21

What is written above applies to linux. Under macOS, the configuration file is in ~/Library/Preferences/clangd/config.yaml. For details, please refer to https://clangd.llvm.org/config#files

Also, you can use If in config.yaml to avoid add -std-c++20 for C files (that’s funny).

Like this:

1If:
2    PathExclude: [.*\.c, .*\.h]
3CompileFlags:
4    Add:
5        - "-std=c++2b"