Configuring IntelliSense for vs-android

This tutorial shows how to configure IntelliSense for vs-android to automatically parse include files from the Android NDK and support all involved GNU extensions.

1. Install VisualGDB 5.0 or later (ensure that “Android Edition” is checked in the installer). This will add support for debugging and Clang-based IntelliSense to vs-android projects.
2. Start Visual Studio. Select “Android->Setup SDK/NDK Locations”. Specify the paths to your Android tools and click “Add Support” to select VisualGDB as a default debugger for vs-android projects:
3. Open a vs-android project (in this example we will use the san-angeles demo) and ensure you can build it successfully:
4. Open one of the source files. Although the syntax highlighting and IntelliSense will work, you will most likely see some error messages:
5. This happens because the NDK uses some GNU extensions that are not enabled with Clang by default. As of NDK r10, the following extensions are used:
   

   Extension	Example	Option to enable
   Named variadic macros	#define __builtin_warning(x, y…)	-Wno-variadic-macros
   Zero-length arrays	char _pad[0]	-Wno-zero-length-array

   Furthermore, the san-angeles example uses some C functions without declaring them and this will be treated as an error unless -Wno-implicit-function-declaration is specified.

   To enable those extensions, double-click on the errors in Error List and, then select the smart tag in the code at the error location and select “ignore this issue for the project”:

6. Once you have enabled all relevant extensions, you can get an overview of the added IntelliSense flags by right-clicking on your project in Solution Explorer, selecting VisualGDB Project Properties, going to the IntelliSense Settings page and checking the “Additional flags for C files” field:
7. Press OK to apply the new settings. The error messages will now disappear and the IntelliSense engine will be able to parse the code correctly. Right-click on appRender() and select “Find all references” to test it out. Note that clang-powered “Find All References” command will also look into references within preprocessor macro expansions and will work instantly even for huge projects.
8. You can also quickly explore the structure of the source code by right-clicking on a function and selecting “Explore call hierarchy”. You can then choose to browse called functions, calling functions, or both:
9. Start debugging your app by pressing F5 (given that you have enabled debugger integration as described in the beginning of this tutorial). Set a breakpoint in camTrack(). Once it is triggered, try entering a complex expression (e.g. cam->dest) in the Watch window. The auto-completion work there same way as when debugging C# programs:
10. You can also use preprocessor macros in Watch expressions or hover mouse over them to see their value in the current context:
11. When you are done debugging, press Shift-F5 to end the debugging session.