---
title: 'GUI and IDE setup'
description: 'This document contains GUI and IDE-specific tips for working on the V8 code base.'
---
The V8 source code can be browsed online with [Chromium Code Search](https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/v8/).

This project’s Git repository may be accessed using many other client programs and plug-ins. See your client’s documentation for more information.

## Visual Studio Code and clangd

For instructions how to set up VSCode for V8, see this [document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BpdCFecUGuJU5wN6xFkHQJEykyVSlGN8B9o3Kz2Oes8/). This is currently (2021) the recommended setup.

## Eclipse

For instructions how to set up Eclipse for V8, see this [document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q3JkYNJhib3ni9QvNKIY_uarVxeVDiDi6teE5MbVIGQ/). Note: as of 2020, indexing V8 with Eclipse does not work well.

## Visual Studio Code and cquery

VSCode and cquery provide good code navigation capabilities. It offers “go to definition” as well as “find all references” for C++ symbols and works quite well. This section describes how to get a basic setup on a *nix system.

### Install VSCode

Install VSCode in your preferred way. The rest of this guide assumes that you can run VSCode from the command line via the command `code`.

### Install cquery

Clone cquery from [cquery](https://github.com/cquery-project/cquery) in a directory of your choice. We use `CQUERY_DIR="$HOME/cquery"` in this guide.

```bash
git clone https://github.com/cquery-project/cquery "$CQUERY_DIR"
cd "$CQUERY_DIR"
git submodule update --init
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=release -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=YES
make install -j8
```

If anything goes wrong, be sure to check out [cquery’s getting started guide](https://github.com/cquery-project/cquery/wiki).

You can use `git pull && git submodule update` to update cquery at a later time (don't forget to rebuild via `cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=release -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=YES && make install -j8`).

### Install and configure cquery-plugin for VSCode

Install the cquery extension from the marketplace in VSCode. Open VSCode in your V8 checkout:

```bash
cd v8
code .
```

Go to settings in VSCode, for example, via the shortcut <kbd>Ctrl</kbd> + <kbd>,</kbd>.

Add the following to your workspace configuration, replacing `YOURUSERNAME` and `YOURV8CHECKOUTDIR` appropriately.

```json
"settings": {
  "cquery.launch.command": "/home/YOURUSERNAME/cquery/build/release/bin/cquery",
  "cquery.cacheDirectory": "/home/YOURUSERNAME/YOURV8CHECKOUTDIR/.vscode/cquery_cached_index/",
  "cquery.completion.include.blacklist": [".*/.vscache/.*", "/tmp.*", "build/.*"],
  […]
}
```

### Provide `compile_commands.json` to cquery

The last step is to generate a compile_commands.json to cquery. This file will contain the specific compiler command lines used to build V8 to cquery. Run the following command in the V8 checkout:

```bash
ninja -C out.gn/x64.release -t compdb cxx cc > compile_commands.json
```

This needs to be re-executed from time to time to teach cquery about new source files. In particular, you should always re-run the command after a `BUILD.gn` was changed.

### Other useful settings

The auto-closing of parenthesis in Visual Studio Code does not work that well. It can be disabled with

```json
"editor.autoClosingBrackets": false
```

in the user settings.

The following exclusion masks help avoid unwanted results when using search (<kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>F</kbd>):

```js
"files.exclude": {
  "**/.vscode": true,  // this is a default value
},
"search.exclude": {
  "**/out*": true,     // this is a default value
  "**/build*": true    // this is a default value
},
```