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WPILib Visual Studio Code

WPILib Installation Guide

This guide is intended for Java and C++ teams. LabVIEW teams can skip to Installing LabVIEW for FRC (LabVIEW only). Additionally, the below tutorial shows Windows 10, but the steps are identical for all operating systems. Notes differentiating operating systems will be shown.

Prerequisites

Supported OSs and Architectures

  • Windows 10 & 11, 64 bit only. 32 bit and Arm are not supported
  • Ubuntu 22.04, 64 bit. Other Linux distributions with glibc >= 2.34 may work, but are unsupported
  • macOS 11 or higher, both Intel and Arm

⚠ Warning

The following OSes are no longer supported: macOS 10.15, Ubuntu 18.04 & 20.04, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and any 32-bit Windows.

WPILib is designed to install to different folders for different years, so that it is not necessary to uninstall a previous version before installing this year’s WPILib.

Downloading

The downloads for WPILib can be found on their GitHub: https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib/releases/

Extracting the Installer

When you download the WPILib installer, it is distributed as a disk image file .iso for Windows, .tar.gz for Linux, and distributed as a DMG for MacOS.

Windows

Windows 10+ users can right click on the downloaded disk image and select Mount to open it. Then launch WPILibInstaller.exe .

Info

Other installed programs may associate with iso files and the mount option may not appear. If that software does not give the option to mount or extract the isfile, then follow the directions below.
You can use 7-zip to extract the disk image by right-clicking, selecting 7-Zip and selecting Extract to… Windows 11 users may need to select Show more options at the bottom of the context menu. After opening the .iso file, launch the installer by opening WPILibInstaller.exe.

Info

After launching the installer, Windows may display a window titled “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info, then select Run anyway to run the installer.

MacOS

For this release, macOS users will need to have the Xcode Command Line Tools installed before running the installer; we are working on removing this requirement in a future release. This can be done by running xcode-select --install in the Terminal.
MacOS users can double click on the downloaded DMG and then select WPILibInstaller to launch the application.

Linux

Linux users should extract the downloaded .tar.gz and then launch WPILibInstaller Ubuntu treats executables in the file explorer as shared libraries, so double-clicking won’t run them. Run the following commands in a terminal instead with <version> replaced with the version you’re installing.
$ tar -xf WPILib_Linux-<version>.tar.gz 
 $ cd  WPILib_Linux-<version>/            
 $ ./WPILibInstaller                     

Running the Installer

When you download the WPILib installer, it is distributed as a disk image file .iso for Windows, .tar.gz for Linux, and distributed as a DMG for MacOS.

This showcases a list of options included with the WPILib installation.

  • Tools Only installs just the WPILib tools (Pathweaver, Shuffleboard, RobotBuilder, SysID, Glass, and OutlineViewer) and JDK.
  • Everything installs the full development environment (VS Code, extensions, all dependencies), WPILib tools, and JDK.
You will notice two buttons, Install for this User and Install for all Users. Install for this User only installs it on the current user account, and does not require administrator privileges. However, Install for all Users installs the tools for all system accounts and will require administrator access. Install for all Users is not an option for macOS and Linux.

Info

If you select Install for all Users, Windows will prompt for administrator access through UAC during installation.

Select the option that is appropriate for you, and you’ll presented with the following installation screen.

This next screen involves downloading VS Code. Unfortunately, due to licensing reasons, VS Code can not be bundled with the installer.

  • Download for this computer only
    • This downloads VS Code only for the current platform, which is also the smallest download.
  • Skip and don’t use VS Code
    • Skips installing VS Code. Useful for advanced installations or configurations. Generally not recommended.
  • Select existing VS Code zip for offline install on this computer
    • Selecting this option will bring up a prompt allowing you to select a pre-existing zip file of VS Code that has been downloaded by the installer previously. This option does not let you select an already installed copy of VS Code on your machine.
  • Create VS Code zip to share with other computers/OSes for offline install
    • This option downloads and saves a copy of VS Code for all platforms, which is useful for sharing the copy of the installer.
Go ahead and select Download for this computer only . This will begin the download process and can take a bit depending on internet connectivity (it’s ~100MB).Once the download is done, select Next . You should be presented with a screen that looks similar to the one below.

After installation is complete, you will be presented with the finished screen.

Important

WPILib installs a separate version of VS Code. It does not use an already existing installation. Each year has it’s own copy of the tools appended with the year. IE: WPILib VS Code 2022 . Please launch the WPILib VS Code and not a system installed copy!

Congratulations, the WPILib development environment and tooling is now installed on your computer! Press Finish to exit the installer.

Post-Installation

Some operating systems require some final action to complete installation.

MacOS

After installation, the installer opens the WPILib VS Code folder. Drag the VS Code application to the dock. Eject WPILibInstaller image from the desktop.

Linux

Some versions of Linux (e.g. Ubuntu 20.04) require you to give the desktop shortcut the ability to launch. Right click on the desktop icon and select Allow Launching.

Info

Installing desktop tools and rebooting will create a folder on the desktop called YYYY WPILib Tools, where YYYY is the current year. Desktop tool shortcuts are not available on Linux and macOS.

Additional C++ Installation for Simulation

C++ robot simulation requires that a native compiler to be installed. For Windows, this would be Visual Studio 2022 (not VS Code), macOS requires Xcode 13 or later , and Linux (Ubuntu) requires the build-essential package.
Ensure the Desktop Development with C++ option is checked in the Visual Studio installer for simulation support.

What is Installed?

The Offline Installer installs the following components:

  • Visual Studio Code - The supported IDE for 2019 and later robot code development. The offline installer sets up a separate copy of VS Code for WPILib development, even if you already have VS Code on your machine. This is done because some of the settings that make the WPILib setup work may break existing workflows if you use VS Code for other projects.

  • C++ Compiler - The toolchains for building C++ code for the roboRIO

  • Gradle - The specific version of Gradle used for building/deploying C++ or Java robot code

  • Java JDK/JRE - A specific version of the Java JDK/JRE that is used to build Java robot code and to run any of the Java based Tools (Dashboards, etc.). This exists side by side with any existing JDK installs and does not overwrite the JAVA_HOME variable

  • WPILib Tools - SmartDashboard, Shuffleboard, RobotBuilder, Outline Viewer, Pathweaver, Glass, SysID

  • WPILib Dependencies - OpenCV, etc.

  • VS Code Extensions - WPILib extensions for robot code development in VS Code

Uninstalling

WPILib is designed to install to different folders for different years, so that it is not necessary to uninstall a previous version before installing this year’s WPILib. However, the following instructions can be used to uninstall WPILib if desired.

Ensure the Desktop Development with C++ option is checked in the Visual Studio installer for simulation support.

Windows

  1. Delete the appropriate wpilib folder ( C:\Users\Public\wpilib\YYYY where YYYY is the year to uninstall)
  2. Delete the desktop icons at C:\Users\Public\Public Desktop

  3. Delete the path environment variables.

    1. In the start menu, type environment and select “edit the system environment variables”

    2. Click on the environment variables button (1).

    3. In the user variables, select path (2) and then click on edit (3).

    4. Select the path with roborio\bin (4) and click on delete (5).
    5. Select the path with frccode and click on delete (5).

    6. Repeat steps 3-6 in the Systems Variable pane.

MacOS

  1. Delete the appropriate wpilib folder (~/wpilib/YYYY where YYYY is the year to uninstall)

Linux

  1. Delete the appropriate wpilib folder (~/wpilib/YYYY where YYYY is the year to uninstall). eg rm -rf ~/wpilib/YYYY

Troubleshooting

In case the installer fails, please open an issue on the installer repository. A link is available here . The installer should give a message on the cause of the error, please include this in the description of your issue.