Language Support for MPLAB®

Welcome! We are working hard to improve your experience and appreciate your patience and support. Features and functionality will remain an active development contribution. Your feedback is invaluable to us. Please report any bugs or suggestions for enhancements.

Features

Language Support for MPLAB extension is designed to enhance your coding experience while working on an MPLAB project by providing language server features such as code completion and go-to-definition.

IntelliSense engines

The extension supports two IntelliSense engines and selects between them automatically based on the active toolchain:

clangd — used for XC8, XC32, and XC-DSC projects. Provides the most accurate IntelliSense using the MPLAB-bundled clangd language server.
Microsoft C/C++ extension (cpptools) — used for toolchains that do not ship a clangd binary (e.g. XC16, ARM-GCC, AVR-GCC). Two sub-modes are available:
- compile_commands.json mode — reads per-file compiler flags from compile_commands.json produced by a project build. Highly accurate.
- Project model mode — reads defines and include paths directly from the MPLAB project file without requiring a build. Less accurate but available immediately.

When cpptools is active, the status bar item shows the current mode. If the project model is in use, a Build project now link appears in the tooltip to help you generate compile_commands.json for improved accuracy.

Configuring the IntelliSense engine

Setting	Default	Description
`mplab.clangd.languageSupportMode`	`auto`	Controls which engine is used. `auto` picks clangd where available, falling back to cpptools. Set to `clangd`, `cpptools-compile-db`, or `cpptools-model` to force a specific mode.
`mplab.clangd.allowCppToolsModelFallback`	`true`	When `auto` or `cpptools-compile-db` is selected, fall back to the project model if `compile_commands.json` has not yet been generated. Disable to require a build before IntelliSense activates.

Setup

The extension requires the clangd language server for XC8, XC32, and XC-DSC projects. The language server can be found in compatible MPLAB XC Compiler installations here.

For XC16, ARM-GCC, and AVR-GCC projects the Microsoft C/C++ extension (ms-vscode.cpptools) is used automatically — no additional setup is required.

The language server needs to know which MPLAB project configuration you are working with to give you support. This can be changed by interacting with the "MPLAB LSP" status bar item itself, or with the tooltip that appears when hovering over the status bar item, and choosing the option to change the project configuration used by MPLAB Language Support.

📦 Requirements

MPLAB Services

🐞 Feedback and issue reporting

Go to mplabfeedback.microchip.com to report issues and suggest enhancements.

📝 License Information

The MPLAB® Extensions for Visual Studio Code are distributed under a non-exclusive software license agreement provided by Microchip Technology Inc. To review the complete terms and conditions governing the use of this software, please consult the "license" file included with this package.

Language Support for MPLAB extension was forked from LLVM Clangd extension here