Microsoft Native Debugger licensing and Microsoft Visual Studio Code

This Wiki page contains information for the following error:

Windows C++ Debugging is supported only in Microsoft versions of VS Code. See https://aka.ms/VSCode-CppVsDbgLicense for more information.

What does this error mean?

The C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code includes the Microsoft C/C++ Debugger (vsdbg). Unlike VS Code, vsdbg is not an open-source product but rather is a proprietary part of Visual Studio. It is licensed to work only with IDEs from Microsoft -- Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, or Visual Studio for Mac. Visual Studio Code has an official version distributed by Microsoft but it is also an open source project, so anyone can build and distribute their own version. The debugger is only licensed to work with the Microsoft-distributed version of Visual Studio Code.

How to resolve the issue

If you installed the OSS version of VS Code, you can uninstall it and reinstall the Microsoft version from https://code.visualstudio.com/download.

If you believe you have the Microsoft version installed and you are still seeing this problem, you can open an issue in this repo.