Error: No usable generator found

1

Hi,

I’m still finding my feet with PlatformIO and have a number of small projects running on various boards.

Today, I was suddenly unable to compile anything and can see this error message:

[main] Unable to determine what CMake generator to use. Please install or configure a preferred generator, or update settings.json, your Kit configuration or PATH variable. Error: No usable generator found.

The VS Code toolbar looks like this:

image
image2523×129 34.3 KB

Afaik, I haven’t changed anything and the problem appeared from nowhere. Needless to say, I’ve tried several fresh installs, having deleted the .vscode directory.

Any help gratefully received, as always!

2

PlatformIO does not need the CMake extension, in fact it very likely conflicts.

Deactivate the CMake extension for the workspace (left extension sidebar → cogwheel on CMake extension → Disable (workspace).

Remove the .vscode folder thereafter and Ctrl+Shift+P → Rebuild Intellisense.

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3

Thanks a lot for the quick answer. It didn’t quite fix the problem. I removed CMake and was left with no icons on the main bar. In the end, I deleted my project and started again. What I found alarming was that other, previously working projects were all similarly affected. Suddenly, everything just started working again and I don’t really know why. Not perfect but at least it’s working.

Thanks again for your help.

4

Deactivating the extension didn’t help for me either. I had to completely uninstall it. Now those warnings have gone away. I don’t know why it was installed, I don’t use CMake myself. Maybe it came for the esp-idf extension that I used before PlatformIO. That’s the problem with VSCode: if you want to use it for many different things, the extensions just accumulate and are all always there. When they start to conflict with each other, things get ugly.

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