VSCode Server Setup C Programming on Headless Raspberry Pi

Have you wondered how to code in C on your Raspberry Pi? Well today we are going to show you how to write a C program on a Raspberry Pi running in headless mode, that is the Raspberry Pi is only connected to WiFi and power, no keyboard or monitor. Programming on C on a normal Raspberry Pi is quite straightforward, you can just install VSCode and program away. However on a headless install like the one I set up in the video linked in the cards above, it makes things a little more complicated as we have no direct access to the machine, only over SSH.

Command Line Method

sudo nano hello-world-cmd.c

The following simple hello world code is used:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(){
   printf("Hello from the command line! \n");
   return 0;
}

The next three lines of commands are used to compile and run the program we just wrote:

gcc hello-world-cmd.c -o hello-world-cmd
chmod +x hello-world-cmd
./hello-world-cmd

However, this method of writing a C code over an SSH connection is not great for anything more than a few lines of code! That’s where VSCode is going to come in.

VSCode Setup

On your local machine, open VSCode. Follow the following steps to set-up the device:

1. Install Remote Development Extension
2. Open command pallet (ctrl+shift+p) and select “SSH Add new host”, type ssh then your username at the Pi’s IP address. Eg: ssh pi@192.168.1.200 hit enter and then enter again.
3. Open command pallet and select “SSH Connect to Host”. Select your raspberry Pi’s IP address.
4. Select linux as the platform then enter your password when prompted.
5. Install c/c++ extension on the SSH device. Press the install on SSH:192.168.X.X.
6. Open the explorer panel and select open folder. Open your user folder when prompted (this may reload VSCode).
7. Create a new file (hello-world-vscode.c) and copy the same code as used above in the basic hello world tutorial. Save the file.
8. Build the file using ctrl+shift+B then selecting “gcc Build Active Task”.
9. In the terminal tab run the file using the command: ./hello-world-vscode

We now have VSCode configured so you can program in C on your headless raspberry pi!