Visual Studio Code – wxWidgets setup with mingw64 and vscode

I have tried everything from wxWiki to chatGPT and nothing solves my issue, please note that I do not need an alternative solution, and want to understand what I am missing in this implementation.

Steps I followed,

• Step 1: Install mingw64 on my windows 11 x64 processor using mingw-builds-binaries. I chose the Release of 13.2.0-rt_v11-rev1 x86_64-13.2.0-release-win32-seh-ucrt-rt_v11-rev1.7z build.

• Step2: Create project folder myWxProject [%project%], %project%/libs/wxWidgets [%wxWidgets%].

• Step 3: Download the wxWidgets source files from Windows 7z v3.235. Extract the files into %wxWidgets%.

• Step 4: Build the files using gcc make by going into %wxWidgets%/build/msw/ and running the command mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc BUILD=release SHARED=0 UNICODE=1 please note that even the next option BUILD=debug with the necessary changes to includes still gives the error.

• Step 5: Add VSCode configurations c_cpp_properties.json to %project%/.vscode/

{
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Win32",
            "includePath": [
                "${workspaceFolder}\libs\wxWidgets\include",
                "${workspaceFolder}\libs\wxWidgets\lib\gcc_lib\mswu"
            ],
            "defines": [
                "_DEBUG",
                "UNICODE",
                "__WXMSW"
            ],
            "intelliSenseMode": "gcc-x64",
            "compilerPath": "C:\mingw64\bin\g++.exe",
            "cStandard": "c11",
            "cppStandard": "c++17"
        }
    ],
    "version": 4
}

and tasks.json to %project/.vscode/%

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "cpp-build-debug",
            "type": "shell",
            "command": "g++",
            "args": [
                "-g",
                "${file}",
                "-o",
                "${workspaceFolder}\cpp-build-debug\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe",
                "-I",
                "${workspaceFolder}\libs/wxWidgets\include",
                "${workspaceFolder}\libs/wxWidgets\lib\gcc_lib\mswu",
                "-L",
                "${workspaceFolder}\libs\wxWidgets\lib\gcc_lib",
                "-lwxbase32u",
                "-lwxmsw32u_core",
                "-lwxmsw32u_adv"
            ],
            "group": {
                "kind": "build",
                "isDefault": true
            },
            "problemMatcher": [
                "$gcc"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

• Step 6: Make a file helloWorld.cpp and have the simple wxWidgets example code in it.

// Start of wxWidgets "Hello World" Program
#include <wx/wx.h>
 
class MyApp : public wxApp
{
public:
    bool OnInit() override;
};
 
wxIMPLEMENT_APP(MyApp);
 
class MyFrame : public wxFrame
{
public:
    MyFrame();
 
private:
    void OnHello(wxCommandEvent& event);
    void OnExit(wxCommandEvent& event);
    void OnAbout(wxCommandEvent& event);
};
 
enum
{
    ID_Hello = 1
};
 
bool MyApp::OnInit()
{
    MyFrame *frame = new MyFrame();
    frame->Show(true);
    return true;
}
 
MyFrame::MyFrame()
    : wxFrame(nullptr, wxID_ANY, "Hello World")
{
    wxMenu *menuFile = new wxMenu;
    menuFile->Append(ID_Hello, "&Hello...tCtrl-H",
                     "Help string shown in status bar for this menu item");
    menuFile->AppendSeparator();
    menuFile->Append(wxID_EXIT);
 
    wxMenu *menuHelp = new wxMenu;
    menuHelp->Append(wxID_ABOUT);
 
    wxMenuBar *menuBar = new wxMenuBar;
    menuBar->Append(menuFile, "&File");
    menuBar->Append(menuHelp, "&Help");
 
    SetMenuBar( menuBar );
 
    CreateStatusBar();
    SetStatusText("Welcome to wxWidgets!");
 
    Bind(wxEVT_MENU, &MyFrame::OnHello, this, ID_Hello);
    Bind(wxEVT_MENU, &MyFrame::OnAbout, this, wxID_ABOUT);
    Bind(wxEVT_MENU, &MyFrame::OnExit, this, wxID_EXIT);
}
 
void MyFrame::OnExit(wxCommandEvent& event)
{
    Close(true);
}
 
void MyFrame::OnAbout(wxCommandEvent& event)
{
    wxMessageBox("This is a wxWidgets Hello World example",
                 "About Hello World", wxOK | wxICON_INFORMATION);
}
 
void MyFrame::OnHello(wxCommandEvent& event)
{
    wxLogMessage("Hello world from wxWidgets!");
}

• Step 7: Finally run the cpp-build-debug task.

Error

In file included from %project%libs/wxWidgetsinclude/wx/defs.h:45,
                 from %project%libs/wxWidgetsinclude/wx/wx.h:14,
                 from %project%helloWorld.cpp:2:
%project%libs/wxWidgetsinclude/wx/platform.h:159:10: fatal error: wx/setup.h: No such file or directory
  159 | #include "wx/setup.h"
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

The things I am sure of:
I can ensure that there is a file called setup.h in the directory %wxWidgets%/lib/gcc_lib/mswu/wx/ but even though the folder is in include it does not find it. Something bizzare I had noticed, the extraction of the sources had a folder inside include %wxWidgets%/include/msvc which also contains a wx folder and a setup.h, if I understand it correct from this wiki this file is for the visual studio build setup, hence I will not be using it. I did try everything that came to my mind for the past couple of days and for the life of me could not figure out why it gives me this setup.h error.

I hope this information is enough. I can provide the entire built folder with my project if you want for the exact files in my system, but since its quite large I did not include it right now.

[EDIT] Additional information:

I have the same issue when compiling the minimal program from the samples. This was once again built by gcc-make mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc after navigating into the minimal sample folder.