The first time you run your program, the C++ extension creates a tasks.json file, which you'll find in your project's .vscode folder. tasks.json stores your build configurations.

Your new tasks.json file should look similar to the JSON below:

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "type": "cppbuild",
      "label": "C/C++: g++.exe build active file",
      "command": "C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\bin\\g++.exe",
      "args": [
        "-fdiagnostics-color=always",
        "-g",
        "${file}",
        "-o",
        "${fileDirname}\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe"
      ],
      "options": {
        "cwd": "${fileDirname}"
      },
      "problemMatcher": ["$gcc"],
      "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": true
      },
      "detail": "Task generated by Debugger."
    }
  ],
  "version": "2.0.0"
}

Note: You can learn more about tasks.json variables in the variables reference.

The command setting specifies the program to run; in this case that is g++.

The args array specifies the command-line arguments that will be passed to g++.

These arguments are listed in this file in the specific order expected by the compiler.

This task tells g++ to take the active file (${file}), compile it, and create an executable file in the current directory (${fileDirname}) with the same name as the active file but with the .exe extension (${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe).

For us, this results in helloworld.exe.

The label value is what you will see in the tasks list; you can name this whatever you like.

The detail value is what you will as the description of the task in the tasks list.

It's highly recommended to rename this value to differentiate it from similar tasks.

From now on, the play button will read from tasks.json to figure out how to build and run your program.

You can define multiple build tasks in tasks.json, and whichever task is marked as the default will be used by the play button.

In case you need to change the default compiler, you can run Tasks: Configure Default Build Task in the Command Palette.

Alternatively you can modify the tasks.json file and remove the default by replacing this segment:

    "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": true
    },

with this:

"group": "build",

You can modify your tasks.json to build multiple C++ files by using an argument like "${workspaceFolder}/*.cpp" instead of ${file}.

This will build all .cpp files in your current folder.

You can also modify the output filename by replacing "${fileDirname}\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe" with a hard-coded filename (for example "${workspaceFolder}\\myProgram.exe").

${workspaceFolder}/*.cpp

"${fileDirname}\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe"

Line 14, can be rename to “${workspaceFolder}\\myProgram.exe”