microsoft/vcpkg

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

27400 stars · 7694 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

vcpkg is Microsoft's free, open-source C/C++ package manager for acquiring and managing open-source libraries on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It integrates with CMake, MSBuild, and other build systems, and supports manifest-based dependency management with a large curated registry of ports.

Use cases

• install c++ libraries for my project
• manage c++ dependencies with cmake
• find a package manager for c/c++ on windows
• add third-party libraries to visual studio project
• reproducible c++ dependency manifests
• cross-platform c++ library management

When to choose

• you develop in C or C++ and need dependency management across Windows, Linux, and macOS
• you use CMake, MSBuild, or Visual Studio and want seamless library integration
• you want a large curated registry of open-source C/C++ libraries with enterprise features

When to avoid

• your project is in another language with its own ecosystem package manager (npm, pip, cargo)
• you need system-wide package management rather than per-project dependencies
• you require libraries not present in the vcpkg registry and cannot contribute ports

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

package-manager build-tool developer-tools cli developer-tools cross-platform windows cpp cli cross-platform c-plus-plus cmake dependency-management microsoft visual-studio msbuild open-source-libraries command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="microsoft/vcpkg")