After installing the 'C/C++' extension from Anysphere, 'PlatformIO IDE' is not activated

Hello!
I have a problem! After installing the ‘C/C++’ extension from Anysphere, ‘PlatformIO IDE’ is not activated, here is the message “Cannot activate the ‘PlatformIO IDE’ extension because it depends on the ‘C/C++’ extension from ‘Anysphere’, which is not installed. Would you like to install the extension and reload the window?”.
I have installed and deleted Cursor a hundred times, but the problem does not go away, everything was fine with C/C++ from Microsoft before, I use the latest version of Cursor. What should I do?

Please help, I can’t work in the platformIO. This application is not activated. Maybe someone can install the platformIO and write here, is there the same error as me?

having the exact same issue on windows i uninstalled extension and reinstalled and still have the same issue.

Hi all – thanks for raising this issue. I have submitted a PR to Platformio to fix it in their upstream repository: Fix compatibility with editors where MS Cpptools is not supported by ravirahman · Pull Request #4312 · platformio/platformio-vscode-ide · GitHub

In the meantime, we have forked their extension and republished it in Cursor. Could you uninstall the existing one and search for @id:anysphere.platformio-ide? This one removes the dependency on the unavailable cpp extension. Attaching a screenshot

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Thanks for your help! I uninstalled and installed the platformIO from Cursor, removed all extensions, but a new error occurred!

Windows 11
Cursor 0.50.7

Hi! Very strange behavior: after installing the extension “from scratch” the .platformio directory is empty.

Hello! Please tell me if there will be a solution to this error?

Hi All, thanks for sharing this bug report. We’re looking into it and will share more once we have a fix.

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That work arround has gone, I think because the latest version from yesterday.
I work on Ubuntu updated everything but still have the problem.

Cannot activate the ‘PlatformIO IDE’ extension because it depends on the ‘C/C++’ extension from ‘Anysphere’, which is not installed. Would you like to install the extension and reload the window?

Ok got solution:
open /home/■■■/.cursor/extensions/platformio.platformio-ide-3.3.4-linux-x64/package.json

search for “extensionDependencies”

change to “extensionPack”

should look like that:

	"webpack-cli": "~6.0.1"
	},
	"extensionPack": [
		"ms-vscode.cpptools"
	],
	"__metadata": {

have fun

regards
Joerg

3 Likes

Hi all – we will have a permanent fix for this in the next update to the Cursor client. In the meantime, I would recommend the workaround that @JoergSH identified to manually monkey-patch the extension.

4 Likes

This is important to me as a paid user to Cursor.

I switched from Windsurf to Cursor, and I need PlatformIO.

Do Not Break PlatformIO, please.

Windsurf worked with PlatformIO via the manual .vsix install trick, but I didn’t have to do any other monkeypatching.

And on Windows, the file to modify is here:
%USERPROFILE%.cursor\extensions\platformio.platformio-\package.json

It works fine by renaming “extensionDependencies” by extensionPack".

Phil

1 Like

This is very helpful for me, thanks a lot!

During my testing, installing the PlatformIO IDE extension forcibly installs the ms-vscode.cpptools extension as a dependency. However, since ms-vscode.cpptools is not compatible with Cursor, it keeps triggering an annoying popup asking to remove it every time Cursor launches.

To prevent this and keep using PlatformIO IDE without that popup, you can manually remove the dependency references:

  1. Go to the directory:

    %USERPROFILE%\.cursor\extensions\platformio.platformio-ide-[version]\
    
  2. Open the package.json file and remove the following section:

    "extensionDependencies": [
        "ms-vscode.cpptools"
    ],
    
  3. In the same folder, open the .vsixmanifest file and remove this line:

    <Property Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Code.ExtensionDependencies" Value="ms-vscode.cpptools" />
    
  4. Save the changes and restart Cursor.

This way, you can uninstall the ms-vscode.cpptools extension without being prompted to also uninstall the PlatformIO IDE extension, which normally happens because Cursor detects ms-vscode.cpptools as incompatible and tries to remove it along with any dependent extensions. After these changes, the forced uninstallation prompt will no longer appear.

2 Likes

This method worked, thanks! but I would rather not go through this…
However, it seems that the intellisense is still not working, which really breaks up the whole IDE… Please fix intellisense and platformio.

Trying to install PIO inside of WSL, cannot find the VScode version, nor the anysphere version. Please fix this ASAP

Hi all – thanks for following up on this issue. Please bump/comment/star this issue in the PlatformIO Github. We pull extensions from Open-VSX, so we’d need it to show up there for it to be available within Cursor.

In the meantime, please continue to use the workarounds above that @JoergSH and @chenxcore mentioned.

This worked for me! Thank you

Had some issues with this and finally got it working.

To synthesize:

Starting from Scratch (uninstall all extensions)

  1. Download the .vsix file for microsoft/vscode-cpptools. (choose the one appropriate to your OS) link to list
  2. Download the .vsix file for Platformio link (again make sure you choose the appropriate one for your OS)
  3. Install both the extensions in Cursor with Cmd + Shift + P > “Extensions: Install from VSIX…” and select the downloaded .vsix files.

The extensions should be working at this point. If it doesn’t work, try @chenxcore’s instructions:

  1. Go to the directory:
%USERPROFILE%\.cursor\extensions\platformio.platformio-ide-[version]\
  1. Open the package.json file and remove the following section:
"extensionDependencies": [
    "ms-vscode.cpptools"
],
  1. In the same folder, open the .vsixmanifest file and remove this line:
<Property Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Code.ExtensionDependencies" Value="ms-vscode.cpptools" />
  1. Save the changes and restart Cursor.

Hope it helps.

1 Like

This worked for me and IntelliSense is working; I presume the PIO extension needs the official Microsoft C/C++ extension rather than the Anysphere version.