10. Intro to VS Code Tasks

Information

In order to simplify the process of building and running FTC Docs we have created a set of tasks for Visual Studio Code. These tasks are defined in the .vscode/tasks.json file and can be run via the Terminal -> Run Task… menu.

10.1. Tasks

10.1.1. make-setup

This task will install the necessary dependencies for building FTC Docs. This task should only need to be run once.

10.1.2. make-html

This task will build the HTML version of the FTC Docs. The output will be placed in the html directory. This will not automatically create a local server to view the output. In most cases we would instead recommend using the make-autobuild task.

10.1.3. make-latexpdf

This task will build the PDF version of the FTC Docs. The output will be placed in the latex directory. In the backend it generates the LaTeX files and then runs pdflatex to generate the PDF. This build functionality is not supported in this tutorial though Codespace users can use this task. The PDF output is stored as docs/build/latex/ftcdocs.pdf. Note that this task takes a long time to run and is not recommended for frequent use.

10.1.4. make-autobuild

This task will build the HTML version of the FTC Docs and then start a local server to view the output. It will also automatically rebuild the HTML version of the FTC Docs whenever a file is changed. This is the recommended way to view the FTC Docs while working on them. It is also hotkeyed to Ctrl+Shift+B for easy access. You can stop this task by pressing Ctrl+C in the terminal.

10.1.5. make-clean

This task will remove all of the build artifacts. This is useful if you want to start from a clean slate. This is sometimes necessary if you are not seeing your changes reflected in the output as will sometimes happen with images and other static files.