VSCode C/C++ Plugin Formatting Fails

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of programming in C++ for my work. I have also switched my editor of choice from Atom to VS Code. One of my favorite plugins on VS Code is C/C++ ms-vscode.cpptools. This is plugin offers great features like code auto-formatting, IntelliSense (code suggestions), and syntax highlighting for C and C++. These features are reminiscent of working in Visual Studio and for a text editor, that’s plenty.

Since Ubuntu 19.04, there is an annoying bug in the extension where it fails to auto-format code on a fresh install of Ubuntu. I have experienced this with both Ubuntu 19.04 and 19.10.

Thankfully, the cause of this bug is described here: Formatting Failed C/C++ No info in Output window · Issue #3271 · Microsoft/vscode-cpptools · GitHub. Basically, the plugin looks for libtinfo.so.5 which is not present on Ubuntu 19.04 and after. Auto formatting fails when the plugin fails to locate the required lib. A solution is described in the comments on the same issue page. Seems sym-linking libtinfo.so.6 to libtinfo.so.5 solves the issue.

$ sudo apt install libncurses5-dev
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux/libncurses.so.6 \
             /usr/lib/x86_64-linux/libncurses.so.5

Everything should work fine after doing this. Happy coding!