Debugging C using Visual Studio Code on Windows - c

Question

I'm trying to debug a C program using Visual Studio Code on Windows 10,
which I have the C/C++ extension installed in.
My problem is that when I create Source.c in my workspace ( E:\Docs\c ), write some code then hit F5, it shows an error message launch: program 'E:\Docs\c\a.exe' does not exist, which means VSCode doesn't do the compiling thing.
Meanwhile when I go to the console and type gcc source.c, which creates a.exe in the same folder, and hit F5 again it starts with no problems, but doing that every time I want to run the code is annoying.
So, is there a way to compile the code from inside VSCode ?
Here is my c_cpp_properties.json :
{
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Win32",
"includePath": [
"${workspaceFolder}",
"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\mingw-w64\\i686-8.1.0-posix-dwarf-rt_v6-rev0\\mingw32\\lib\\gcc\\i686-w64-mingw32\\8.1.0\\include"
],
"defines": [
"_DEBUG",
"UNICODE",
"_UNICODE"
],
"intelliSenseMode": "msvc-x64"
}
],
"version": 4
}
And this is launch.json :
{
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "(gdb) Launch",
"type": "cppdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/a.exe",
"args": [],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
"environment": [],
"externalConsole": true,
"MIMode": "gdb",
"miDebuggerPath": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\mingw-w64\\i686-8.1.0-posix-dwarf-rt_v6-rev0\\mingw32\\bin\\gdb.exe",
"setupCommands": [
{
"description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
"text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
"ignoreFailures": true
}
]
}
]
}

Answer 1

I think you should add prelaunched task with label of your build task to launch.json like this:
"preLaunchTask": "build" // label of your build task
This means you should have in your tasks.json following task with label build e.g.
"tasks": [
{
"label": "build",
"type": "shell",
"command": "gcc -g source.c"
"group": {
"kind": "build",
"isDefault": true
}
}
]
Also "-g" flag is important for enabling debugging