Is there a way to set up a shortcut to call Build Tasks in VS Code?

Question

Currently, I have a Build Task set up in Visual Studio Code (not Visual Studio). When I press Ctrl+Shift+B, I get a list of my build tasks, I then have to select my task and then it will compile and run my program.

Is there an easier way to do this, so instead of Ctrl+Shift+B -> Enter, I can just press one button and have a preset Build Task run? Either a keyboard button or a GUI button will work great.

Answer 1

Mark the task as your default build task via Terminal -> Configure Default Build Task... This simply adds the following to the task in tasks.json:

"group": {
    "kind": "build",
    "isDefault": true
}

After that, Ctrl+Shift+B will run the task directly.

Additionally, you could also have a default test task with "kind": "test". That task can be directly run with the Tasks: Run Test Task command (no shortcut assigned by default).

And finally, if having two shortcuts is still not enough (or you don't want to modify tasks.json), you can set up keybindings to run tasks directly by their name:

{
    "key": "ctrl+b",
    "command": "workbench.action.tasks.runTask",
    "args": "run"
}

Replacing run with the label of your Build Task.

To open keybindings.json press Ctrl+K Ctrl+S or click File -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts. You may need to add [] if the file was previously empty.