Documentation needed for New C/C++ Project options

[eparadis]

Describe the bug
When creating a new project using the "New C/C++ Project" quick action, it is unclear what any of the selectable options do.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install the latest version of the extension following the documentation here.
2. Click 'New C/C++ Project' from the extensions quick actions menu
3. Enter a project name
4. Scroll down to the 'Features', 'Stdio support', 'Code generation options', and 'Debugger' sections

Expected behavior

• Each of these selectable options has a description available which describes what they are.
• The reason you would want to choose any option is briefly explained. (IE: "Running the program from RAM rather than flash will foobar your dingbats more frumiously.")
• Abbreviations are defined.
• Any tradeoffs when selecting different combinations are explained. (IE: "By enabling the HW watchdog, you will have access to one less HW Timer.")
• Whether or not you can change these options in the future is explained.
  • If they can be changed, how to do so is briefly explained. (IE: "These options can be changed later for this project by using the 'Change options...' menu item")

Actual Behavior

• The user is presented with 15 binary choices (32k possible combinations)
• The PDF documentation briefly explains the "Stdio support"

Platform (please complete the following information):

• OS: MacOS
• Architecture: arm/apple

Additional context
Please add this documentation inline to the extension itself. It should of course be added to the PDF documentation as well, but external documentation will quickly go out of date and the extension should be self-documenting.

I would offer to cut a PR to address this, but there doesn't actually seem to be any documentation of these options in the first place.

Unexplained options
(for future searching)

• Features
  • SPI
  • I2C interface
  • UART
  • PIO interface
  • DMA support
  • HW interpolation
  • HW watchdog
  • HW timer
  • HW clocks
• Stdio support
  • Console over UART
  • Console over USB (disables other USB use)
• Code generation options
  • Run the program from RAM rather than flash
  • Use project name as entry point file name
  • Generate C++ code
  • Enable C++ RTTI (Uses more memory)
  • Enable C++ exceptions (Uses more memory)

[will-v-pi]

The “Features” all add a small piece of example code to demonstrate that piece of functionality (SPI, I2C, etc). We can add a brief note to explain that.

The “Stdio Support” should be self explanatory - do you want your console (printf etc) to be sent over UART, USB (which disables other USB use), both or neither.

The “Code Generation Options” are also self-explanatory as to what they do, and include mention of the tradeoffs for the C++ options.

I don’t think we’ll add documentation to the project creation page explaining why all these options are useful/the tradeoffs, as that is all documented briefly in the documentation included in the extension and thoroughly in the Pico C/C++ SDK PDF. You will likely need to read that documentation anyway to extend the small example snippets added by enabling Features.

You cannot toggle the options later using the extension, you just need to manually edit the code - these options just add snippets to the C and CMakeLists.txt file when the project is created. Everything they do is documented in the main SDK documentation.