Explain the need for this extension

[BMBurstein]

Please explain better in the documentation (or elsewhere) what is the need for this extension. VSCode cpptools already supports debugging using both gdb and lldb, so what value does this extension add?

[WebFreak001]

this extension was there before and also has some different implementations on a few things, I think just trying it out and comparing using them will make it obvious

[GitMensch]

One very important thing that will always be different is also the license.

This repo is clearly Public Domain via Unlicense while cpptools' is not 100% clear but points to MS License with nasty stuff like

You may only use the C/C++ Extension for Visual Studio Code with Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio software to help you develop and test your applications. You may not share, publish [...] the software, or provide the software as a stand-alone hosted solution for others to use.

So don't dare to copy the mscode.cpptools.vsix around - I just did it with this extension, sharing it with multiple colleagues.

[AlexanderBurker]

Licence is a good point, because the MS C++ extension is (I believe) not legally compatible with editors such as vscodium, whereas this repository has no such problems.

[GitMensch]

I haven't checked the cpptools because of their license much, but I think the SSH debug on the different machine (= not attach via gdbserver) may not be available there. It is a very cool feature that allows you to debug for example on linux from a windows machine, something that plain gdb can only do if you configured it with a target for this [or I may be completely wrong about that feature]...

So the main question is: How do users want to have it documented (I guess in README.md but have no clue about the How)? Maybe someone can create a PR for this?

[DragonSWDev]

When I searched for VSCode and cpptools alternative I found this extension. I think it can be considered as free (as in freedom) alternative (with clangd for intellisense) for cpptools. cpptools is not fully free and it can't be used in non Microsoft builds of Visual Studio Code. It may be a problem for somebody who wants to use only open source tools for some reason but still loves Visual Studio Code workflow. VS Codium (or any other open source build) with clangd and this extension may be pretty decent alternative for VSCode and cpptools.

There is also another thing. cpptools is using some binary files (which are downloaded after installation) which wouldn't work on unsupported platforms (like FreeBSD) while this extension doesn't depend on any additional binaries so it may work on more platforms. I'm not sure about this one, please correct me if I'm wrong.