Make the extension look for the compiler in the PATH environment variable as well

[luizfernandonb]

Feature Request

Currently we have to put the full path of the compiler in the compilerPath property in c_cpp_properties.json, and this breaks portability between systems, since the paths between Windows and Linux are different, would it be possible to put only the name of the compiler and the extension to search for the executable in the PATH environment variable?

Example: "compilerPath": "C:/Program Files/Clang/bin/clang.exe" -> "compilerPath": "clang"

[Colengms]

Hi Luiz (@luizfernandonb) . I'm going to consider this a bug. I believe this did work at one time and may have regressed.

[luizfernandonb]

Colen Garoutte-Carson (@Colengms)

Just to add, the same goes for clang-tidy, it's on my path

However, the extension downloaded a version and uses it instead of the one in the PATH

And I didn't fill anything in the extension settings

[sean-mcmanus]

I believe the clang-tidy/format issue is tracked by #12718 (it currently doesn't use the environment version if it's older, which was due to many users having an old version on their machine that causes stuff to not work).