Remote GDB Server and Embedded GDB Server configurations now work with custom targets. These configurations, which previously only worked with CMake targets, allow you to debug your application on a remote host or on the microcontroller from the CLion instance running on your local machine.

If you have already created these configurations, CLion 2020.1 will store previous Run/Debug Configuration settings in the projectFilesBackup directory in the project folder and will notify you about this.

If you need to redirect input from a file to the stdin of your application, you can now do that. Use a new field in the configuration called Redirect input from. Enter:

• A relative path (CLion will prepend with the Working directory path).
• An absolute path (will be remapped for remote configurations).
• Or macros (like FilePrompt).

Now, when you first open a project with a .clang-format config file in the project root, CLion will detect it and switch to ClangFormat for you automatically.

If you enable ClangFormat on a project that doesn't have a .clang-format config file, CLion will suggest creating one for you.

When calling the Change Signature refactoring (Ctrl+F6), CLion updates all the usages of the function. A new Default value field in the Change Signature dialog offers the ability to specify the value of the parameter to be used across all usages. Keep it blank to use the default value type as before.

The same logic and a new Default value field apply to the Create Parameter From Usage quick-fix and the Add Parameter to Constructor intention.

Quick Documentation – a universal tool to preview documentation and get information about function signature, inferred types, and macro replacement – is now available on mouseover.

It can be controlled by the setting Show quick documentation on mouse move in Settings | Editor | Code Editing.

An updated tool window provides more space for the list of modified files and the diff. It also lets you add changes to a commit when they are ready, compose a commit message iteratively, and choose which of the staged changes go into which commit.

The new UI is enabled by default for new users; existing users can switch to it in Settings | Version Control | Commit.

With improvements to LLDB support, IntelliJ Rust now properly renders enums and primitive types, and it also shows demangled function names in the call stack.

Another major update that has landed in the plugin is REPL integration. Invoke the console from Tools | Rust REPL and use it for prototyping and checking your code line by line. The integration provides syntax highlighting and code completion, along with some handy console actions: command history, soft wrap, quick scroll to end, and others.

On the language-support side, IntelliJ Rust now handles impl blocks for type aliases. Taking performance into account, we've only enabled this feature for types with a limited number of aliases.

Other enhancements include highlighting for unused local variables, fixes in cfg attribute support, and the new Lift return inspection.

Support for the new CMake File API lets CLion 2019.3 enable various CMake generators (requires CMake 3.15 or higher). Previously, only Makefiles were supported, now users can select Ninja, Xcode, Visual Studio, etc.

This works for all platforms, in remote mode, and with WSL.

If you want to customize the GDB/LLDB debugger behavior on a particular project, you can now do so in CLion, as it supports reading the settings file from the project root directory.

Note that to enable this behavior, you have to explicitly allow it in your home file. See how to do this for LLDB and GDB.

One of the biggest features coming in C++20 is definitely Concepts. By collaborating with the author of Concepts support in Clang, we’ve brought Concepts to CLion 2019.3. The support covers not only code parsing and highlighting (which is done by the Clangd-based language engine), but also comes with:

• The Unused Concept inspection.
• Code completion including completion for types constrained by std::is_base_of<MyBase, T> and std::is_same<Other, T>.
• The Rename refactoring.
• Go to Definition and Find Usages.

If you’ve ever asked the question, “Was this statement executed during the configuration run?”, that means you are looking for statements coverage measuring for your code. CLion 2019.3 has it thanks to the integration with llvm-cov/gcov tools.

You can get it for unit tests run or a regular configuration run. The results are available in the Coverage tool window or via a color indication in the editor’s left gutter.

One of the biggest updates for IntelliJ Rust is the initial support of cfg attributes. Now, the conditionally disabled blocks are grayed-out and excluded from resolve and code analysis. Among the supported cfg options are unix, windows, and target_os.

The widely used quick-fix, Auto-import for unresolved symbols, now works automatically when you call Implement members, Specify type explicitly, Add remaining patterns, and other code generation actions.

Other changes include Code Coverage for your Rust code, which has been a part of the plugin for a few releases already, handy interactive inlays for type hints, and include! macro support.

If you use the Microsoft Visual C++ toolchain in CLion, now you can try a new experimental debugger.

It’s implemented by the JetBrains team on top of LLDB and is bundled into CLion. To enable bundled support for native visualizers, use Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Debugger Data Views | Enable NatVis renderers for LLDB.

An experimental debugger is available when turned on explicitly: call up the Maintenance dialog (Shift+Ctrl+Alt+/) | Experimental features, and select cidr.debugger.lldb.windows to control it.

Thanks to parameter name hints in v2019.2, you can avoid switching to the function signature while exploring a function call. This in turn should help increase the code readability.

For function calls, lambdas, constructors, initializer lists, and macro expressions, CLion shows the names of the parameters for the passed arguments. This works if an argument is a literal or an expression with more than one operand.

If you need to edit shell scripts while you are working on your C++ project, you can do this with CLion as it now bundles the Shell Script plugin.

You can benefit from code highlighting, word and path completion, and even textual Rename.

CLion provides bundled profound support not only for C and C++, but also for Python, JavaScript, XML, and more, as well as providing plugins for Rust, Swift, and Kotlin/Native.

Have code in your project in other languages, such as PHP, Ruby, or C#? You’ll be happy to learn that syntax highlighting is now available in CLion for over 20 different programming languages!

You can now commit directly from Local Changes tab. Just enable the “Commit from the Local Changes without showing a dialog” option at Settings | Version Control | Commit Dialog.

Use the Commit shortcut (Ctrl+K) and the IDE will select the modified files for the commit and focus on the Commit message field in the Local Changes tab of the Version Control tool window.

Another huge update for the Rust plugin brings a new experimental macro expansion engine. You can turn it on in Settings | Languages & Frameworks | Rust | Expand declarative macros.

This engine provides you with code insight features such as highlighting, name resolution, and completion for generated modules and methods from impl blocks. Besides this, it enables navigation in the macro calls.

Other changes include a Duplicate code fragments inspection for Rust, and other new quick-fixes and inspections.