CodePDF

A VS Code extension that does two things:

1. Opens PDF files in a VS Code tab.
2. Exports C++ files as clean, printable PDFs.

I built it for my own assignments. I wanted to read the assignment PDF next to my code, and then turn my .cpp files into PDFs I could upload, without leaving VS Code.

Everything runs on your computer. There is no telemetry, no account and no network access.

Viewing PDFs

Open any .pdf file in VS Code and it shows up in a tab.

• Scroll through pages, or type a page number to jump to it
• Zoom in and out, Fit Width and Fit Page
• Search for text (Cmd+F on Mac, Ctrl+F elsewhere)
• Open several PDFs at once
• If the PDF changes on disk, the tab reloads and keeps your place
• Broken, empty or password-protected files get a clear message instead of a blank tab

Links inside a PDF never open by themselves. CodePDF asks first, and only opens web and email links.

Exporting C++ to PDF

Supported files: .cpp, .cc, .cxx, .h, .hpp, .hh, .hxx

You can run them from the Command Palette, or by right-clicking a file or folder in the Explorer, or by right-clicking in the editor.

The PDFs have syntax colours, line numbers, a header with the file name and a footer with the date and "Page X of Y". Long lines wrap onto the next row instead of being cut off. Combined PDFs get a bookmark for each file.

Export a file

Asks before replacing a PDF

Export just the lines you select

Long lines wrap, nothing gets cut off

Combine several files into one PDF

Export a whole folder (skips build folders and hidden files)

Some details worth knowing:

• Your source files are never changed.
• If the PDF already exists, CodePDF asks before replacing it.
• If a file is open with unsaved changes, the export uses what is on screen and tells you so.
• The PDF uses the same font as your editor (the editor.fontFamily setting), as long as it is a monospace font installed on your computer. Otherwise it uses the system's default monospace font.
• Folder export skips hidden files and folders, and folders named node_modules, build, builds, dist, out, bin, obj, debug, release, x64, x86, target or starting with cmake-build-. It shows you the file list before exporting, so you can untick anything.
• If you export main.cpp and main.h together as separate PDFs, they are named main.cpp.pdf and main.h.pdf so one does not overwrite the other.

Settings

Search for "CodePDF" in VS Code's Settings.

Tab width follows your editor's tab size.

Privacy and security

• No telemetry, analytics, ads, accounts or network requests. PDFs are read and written on your computer only.
• The viewer runs in a locked-down webview. Its content security policy blocks all network access, inline scripts, eval and WebAssembly. It can only load files from the extension's own folder, and the PDF is passed in as data, so the viewer never gets access to your folders.
• PDF scripting is turned off, and the part of PDF.js that runs scripts inside PDFs is not shipped.
• Your code is only read as text. It is never run, and never passed to a shell.
• To find fonts, CodePDF lists the names of the files in the system font folders and opens the ones that match your editor font.

Dependencies

All of them come from the npm registry (https://registry.npmjs.org/), pinned to exact versions in package-lock.json.

Shipped with the extension:

pdfkit and fontkit bring 16 small helper packages with them (compression, line breaking, PNG reading, encryption, Unicode data). package-lock.json lists every one with its version and checksum.

Used only for building and testing, never shipped:

The C++ syntax colouring is written from scratch in src/export/cppTokenizer.ts, so there is no highlighting library.

Install scripts are turned off for this project (.npmrc), and optional binary packages are not installed.

Known issue: npm audit reports one moderate issue in minimatch 10.2.6, which @vscode/vsce uses (GHSA-g3hv-75wg-m249). It is a build tool only, it only reads this project's own packaging patterns, and it is not part of the extension.

Limitations

• Syntax colouring is for C++ only, and it is pattern-based rather than a full parser, so unusual macros can be coloured slightly wrong. The text itself is always exact.
• Emoji are not supported in exported PDFs.
• Characters your editor font does not have (for example Chinese, Japanese or Korean) are filled in from a system font. This is tested on macOS. On Windows and Linux the font lookup is written but not tested yet.
• The viewer is read-only. It cannot edit, annotate, fill in forms or print.
• PDFs over 300 MB and source files over 10 MB are refused.

Building it yourself

You need Node.js and VS Code 1.140 or newer.

npm ci --omit=optional   # install the exact pinned dependencies
npm test                 # build, then run the unit tests
npm run test:vscode      # run the tests inside VS Code (macOS, uses a separate test profile)
npm run package          # build codepdf-<version>.vsix

To install the .vsix: open the Extensions view in VS Code, click the ... menu at the top, choose "Install from VSIX..." and pick the file.

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE. The bundled PDF.js files keep their own Apache-2.0 licence, which is included in media/pdfjs/.