[develop2] Cross debugging with Visual Studio 2022 and WSL2

[steinerthomas]

Finally (and due to conan1-freeze 😉) I had time to migrate from conan1 to conan2.
I'm using a Visual Studio 2022 CMake project with WSL2 (and/or devcontainers). You can find a demo migration project here: https://github.com/steinerthomas/vs-cmake-conan-wsl-template

Debugging/Running the program/tests "native" in WSL2 with the default profile (or in the devcontainers) works well (see example preset wsl-debug).

Unfortunately I can't cross-compile (or cross-debug on remote machines) to other architectures (see example preset remote-debug-showcase) with cmake-conan, because the conan generated presets are not used and so for example linking fails:
https://github.com/steinerthomas/vs-cmake-conan-wsl-template/pull/3/files

See Visual Studio build logs

Starting copying files to remote machine.
Copying 'C:\vs-cmake-conan-wsl-template\conanfile.py' to '/home/thomas/.vs/vs-cmake-conan-wsl-template/conanfile.py'.
Finished copying files (elapsed time 00h:00m:00s:163ms).
 cd /home/thomas/.vs/vs-cmake-conan-wsl-template//out/build/remote-debug-showcase;export CMAKE_BUILD_PARALLEL_LEVEL=8;export REMOTE_DEBUG_MACHINE=192.168.110.10;/usr/bin/cmake --build /home/thomas/.vs/vs-cmake-conan-wsl-template//out/build/remote-debug-showcase --config Debug;

[ 25%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/MyLib.dir/src/MyLib.cpp.o
[ 50%] Linking CXX static library libMyLib.a
[ 50%] Built target MyLib
[ 75%] Linking CXX executable MyLib_ut
/usr/bin/ld: /home/thomas/.conan2/p/b/libxm740122de5cf93/p/lib/libxml2.so: error adding symbols: file in wrong format
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
gmake[2]: *** [tests/CMakeFiles/MyLib_ut.dir/build.make:102: tests/MyLib_ut] Error 1
gmake[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:882: tests/CMakeFiles/MyLib_ut.dir/all] Error 2
gmake: *** [Makefile:101: all] Error 2


Build All failed.

Due to the described problem I can't use cmake-conan conan_provider.cmake because I already have CMakePresets.json in my projects and I can't include the conan generated once.

As also described here https://docs.conan.io/2.12/integrations/visual_studio.html#conan-extension-for-visual-studio:
For CMake-based projects, please refer to the https://github.com/conan-io/cmake-conan.

---

As a workaround I've created my own conan cmake install wrapper, which basically calls conan install before cmake "CMAKE_PROJECT_INCLUDE_BEFORE": "$env{HOME}/.conan2/extensions/cmake/conan_install.cmake" and set the conan generated toolchain "toolchainFile": "${sourceDir}/out/build/${presetName}/build/Debug/generators/conan_toolchain.cmake":

conan_install.cmake:

set(CONAN_HOST_PROFILE "default" CACHE STRING "conan host profile")
set(CONAN_BUILD_PROFILE "default" CACHE STRING "conan build profile")

message (STATUS "conan install ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR} -u -pr:h ${CONAN_HOST_PROFILE} -pr:b ${CONAN_BUILD_PROFILE} -s build_type=${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE} -of ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} ${CONAN_INSTALL_ARGS}")
execute_process(
	COMMAND conan install ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR} -u -pr:h ${CONAN_HOST_PROFILE} -pr:b ${CONAN_BUILD_PROFILE} -s build_type=${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE} -of ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} ${CONAN_INSTALL_ARGS}
	WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
	RESULT_VARIABLE CONAN_INSTALL_RESULT
)

I know I could also invoke conan install manually, but especially in devcontainers it would be annoying switching beteween muliple target architectures ...

---

I know there are existing issues: #569, #544
But I think the problem there was the cyclic cache generation which is not a problem anymore with WSL2 (see #544 (comment)).

---

I hope I could describe my problem in detail.
Maybe I missed something and you can help me out, or probably you have a better idea how to use cmake-conan with existing CMakePresets.