Since CMake is a language of build systems, investigating errors and catching suspicious behavior in a CMake script is not always easy. With CLion 2022.3 you can now debug CMake scripts as regular code. Set breakpoints, step through code, and watch CMake variables and targets.

Learn more.

When there is a file in your CMake-based project that doesn’t belong to any CMake target, CLion code assistance is limited in that file. A new Add to CMake Project quick-fix shown on the notification bar will help you add a file to the existing CMake target.

The action is also available in the project view context menu when called on the file.

CLion collects and parses information about modules from all .ixx, .cppm, and .mxx files in the project. Then it provides syntax highlighting for the new module keywords like import, export, and module.

With CLion, you can navigate to declaration/definition for symbols from modules in one click.

A new run/debug configuration type (C/C++ File) allows you to quickly configure the toolchain, source files, and compilation options. When created, it allows you to compile and run the selected files.

If you develop for embedded systems, chances are that you need to write linker scripts. CLion 2022.3 now comes with Linker Script (LD) language support, which includes:

• Code highlighting in LD files, which you can configure in Settings | Editor | Color Scheme | LinkerScript.
• Code completion.
• Structure view for top-level commands.
• Code folding for sections, memory, and phdrs.
• Code commenting / uncommenting.
• Find Usages for simple cases.

The Clang-Tidy binary was updated to v16.0.0 in this release, bringing new checks and various LLVM fixes.

The Clang-Tidy settings (Settings | Editor | Inspections | C/C++ | Static Analysis Tools | Clang-Tidy) were updated and the detailed documentation is now rendered on the left-hand side.

In the Clang-Tidy tooltip in the editor, click on the kebab (three dots) icon on the right-hand side and choose Show Inspection Description to get a short description of a Clang-Tidy check. Use the special Learn More link to navigate to the settings dialog and find out more details about the check.

The Quick Documentation popup now shows the size of the type. Similar to other inspections, this one uses the flags from the project model that CLion passes to Clangd. This allows the IDE to calculate the correct size even in cross-compilation cases.

When you step out of a function that has a non-void return type, CLion now shows its return value in the debugger tool window’s Variables view.

On macOS and Linux, the bundled LLDB version has been updated to LLDB 15.

When debugging with RTOS, CLion provides a view of tasks (threads). Starting with CLion 2022.3, this also works for Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) if the processor cores are identical.

In addition to FreeRTOS and Zephyr, the view has also been enabled for Azure RTOS.

IntelliJ-based IDEs are receiving a new UI. Modern and clean, it aims to reduce visual complexity, provide easy access to essential features, and progressively disclose complex functionality as needed.

Tool windows and features specific to C and C++ are now ready for the new UI! Ready to give it a test drive? Switch to it in Settings | Appearance & Behavior | New UI.

A new solution for synchronizing settings is now available in all IntelliJ-based IDEs, including CLion. The new Settings Sync plugin is capable of syncing all shareable settings from the platform, bundled plugins, and third-party plugins. The settings are stored in the cloud attached to the user’s JetBrains Account. If you use different IntelliJ-based IDEs associated with the same user account, your settings will be automatically synced.

Learn more.

When profiling on a remote or embedded target, you can now import the results locally in CLion via Run | Open Profiler Snapshot. Jump to Source navigation works correctly for profiling data and continues to do so after import/export.

CLion now provides an alternative way to work with projects in WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2) via remote development. Instead of running a full IDE on Windows, your IDE backend will launch directly in WSL2 itself. Then you can connect to it the same way you would connect to any remote machine when using remote development.

• CLion now bundles all default web development plugins from WebStorm (NodeJS, Karma, AngularJS, and others).
• IAR language extensions are now supported in CLion. The code is parsed and highlighted correctly.
• With CLion 2022.3, we have started distributing installers for Windows ARM64. Native tools like Clangd are not yet ported to the platform, so installers only work for Windows 11, which is able to run both x64 and x86 binaries.

The Quick Documentation popup is now available in CMake scripts. The documentation is shown for the standard CMake entities:

• Commands
• Policies
• Modules
• Variables
• Properties

Documentation is always rendered for the currently bundled CMake version and is not available for the user-defined entities for now.

In CLion 2022.2, you can now review CMake cache variables and update CMake options that are passed to the CMake command in a single table-based UI in Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | CMake.

When the table is in focus, start typing to search for a variable or its value. CLion also shows the short description in tooltips for CMake cache variables.

Learn more.

Colorized compiler output helps users deal with compilation errors much faster. That’s why we made our own contribution to CMake v3.24. We implemented a way to enable colorized output for the Ninja generator in CMake in CLion by default.

Note: CLion bundles CMake v3.23 for now. To get the colorized output, you need to get CMake 3.24 and use it in the CLion toolchain.

When reading through the code base, you often want to check the value of constant expressions. CLion now shows the value of the expressions evaluated at compile time in the Quick Documentation popup. This works for consteval, constexpr, or template instantiations, just to name a few examples.

It can be useful to see whether a given struct or class declaration supports copy and move operations, so CLion now shows this information in the Quick Documentation popup.

GDB servers are often used to debug on-chip. A new wizard helps with creating Embedded GDB Server run configurations with the predefined GDB server arguments corresponding to the GDB server type selected in the wizard settings. The supported types are:

• Segger JLink
• QEMU emulator
• PyOCD
• St-util
• STM32CubeIDE ST-LINK GDB server
• PE Micro (OpenSDA)

Learn more.

CLion’s data flow analysis now calculates the upper and lower bounds of the possible values for every integral variable. This provides extra information for checks like Unreachable code, Constant conditions, and others.

On top of this interval analysis, the Array index is out of bounds check is built. It reports variables that access an array or allocated buffer via the index which may be out of bounds.

Learn more.

The inspection settings in Settings | Editor | Inspections now visualize the highlighting style. When you want to change how an inspection appears in the editor, you can set it up using the new Highlighting in editor drop-down menu, which conveniently shows all available highlighting styles.

Valgrind Memcheck is a tool integrated into CLion for detecting memory usage problems. In v2022.2, we’ve enhanced the way configuration issues are reported. CLion now notifies you when Valgrind Memcheck is launched for the release configuration and the debug information is missing for the executable as a result.

When debugging, sometimes the library symbols are not available on your local machine. In this case, you can use a symbol server, a file server that stores your debug symbols centrally on a server rather than on each developer’s machine. In CLion on Windows, you can now configure symbol servers for the debugger in Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Debugger | Symbol Servers.

Learn more.

When using remote development with local sources, the initial synchronization step might take quite some time. CLion 2022.2 uses rsync to synchronize your deployment configuration. Our measurements have shown that this leads to a significant improvement in performance.

Learn more.

IntelliJ Rust now takes #![recursion_limit] into account, which controls the macro expansion depth. If you don’t need macros to expand fully, you can adjust the Maximum recursion limit for macro expansion setting.

We’ve also enabled the new approach to detecting changes in configuration files, as well as a new way to reload project models.

Other IntelliJ Rust plugin improvements:

• The plugin can now convert JSON to Rust structs via copy-paste.
• We’ve added inspections and quick-fixes for unused_must_use and clippy::double_must_use lints.
• The plugin now parses generic parameters, type aliases, and type bindings of generic associated types.
• If the Emulate terminal in output console option is enabled, the proper terminal is now used.
• We’ve implemented some improvements for type inference, including unsized coercion.
• URLs are highlighted and you can open them in a browser.

Space integration is now bundled with CLion 2022.2. With the first-class integration, you can browse Space projects and clone repositories, then start working on them directly. When your changes are ready, you can create a merge request and perform a code review from within the IDE.

• The support for CUDA development in CLion has been enhanced. CUDA compilation database projects are now supported in CLion. And the CUDA-gdb debugger integration was fixed to allow you to step out from CUDA calls correctly.
• CLion v2022.2 enables system header indexing for the Microsoft Visual C++ toolchain. This makes auto-import work for such headers.

The new remote development workflow is now bundled into CLion and available from CLion’s Welcome screen. Use a powerful remote machine to execute all IDE operations and to build, run, and debug code – all while running the IDE on a local thin client.

Cloud dev environments featured in Space can now be used with CLion to speed-up onboarding, get a ready-to-use IDE in seconds, and manage your development resources efficiently. Learn more about Space dev environments.

Learn more about remote development with the thin client or consider the other types of remote configurations available in CLion.

When working with the Docker toolchain, you can now provide additional container settings, such as port and volume bindings, and so on.

The Valgrind memcheck tool for detecting memory-usage problems now works with the Docker toolchain.

CLion now automatically creates CMake Profiles for configure presets (it was only available for build presets before). The change makes the configuration process easier and allows the removal of redundant build presets.

CLion now also works with the --preset argument passed to the cmake command. The data from the preset is loaded into build type, toolchain, and build directory settings.

CMake generators are now easier to configure in CLion with the new and updated options:

• Use default – for new projects, this option now takes the build tool configured for the toolchain selected in the corresponding CMake Profile.
• Let CMake decide – this option means CLion won’t be favoring any CMake generator explicitly, meaning that CMake will decide what generator to use.

CMake scripts are now formatted more accurately:

• if() .. endif(), else() and elseif(), endforeach(), endfunction(), endmacro(), and endwhile() are aligned correctly.
• It is now possible to fold blocks for these commands.
• Brace pairing and code block highlighting are available for these commands as well.

The CUDA-GDB debugger can now be used in CLion. To make it work, you’ll need to specify the cuda-gdb binary in the debugger setting of your current toolchain, and use the following compiler option:

add_compile_options(-G) to add CUDA debug symbols.

The option to show both decimal and hex values in the debugger now works for LLDB on Windows (Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Debugger | Data Views | C/C++ | Show integers as hex values and Display alongside the original value).

The Embedded GDB Server configuration can now reset the device at different stages:

• Before or after the download (i.e. flashing MCU ROM or writing to RAM).
• Always (both before and after).
• Or never.

Macros now work in Embedded GDB Server configuration fields.

Intention action suggestions are available via Alt+Enter (alternatively, click the bulb icon). In the suggestions list, now you can also see a preview of the result of the selected action. The preview is available for De Morgan's laws, invert if condition, merge if-else, merge nested if, Clang-Tidy, MISRA, Clazy, split into declaration and assignment, split into separate declarations, and a few other actions. Learn more.

The accuracy of the code analysis engine in CLion was increased by addressing a selection of issues, for example:

• Condition is always false/true checks now work correctly with types and narrowing conversion.
• CLion no longer marks fields as unused if they have non-trivial destructors.

CLion now displays a user-friendly wstring alias as a type hint for the std::basic_string<wchar_t> type.

CLion 2022.1 added parameter info for struct literals and initializer list, as well as made parameter hints more informative for the emplace, emplace_back/emplace_front, and make_unique/make_shared functions.

New formatter options for structured bindings were added to Spaces and Wrapping and Braces sections.

When creating a new C++ class, you can now specify the namespace where you’d like the new class to be located. You can write in any existing or nonexistent namespace (which will be created along with the new class), a nested namespace, or even an anonymous (unnamed) namespace if you enter a blank space in this field.

A new stub project generator for Rust projects will help you even if you don’t have the Rust plugin installed. It will help you install the plugin and navigate you through project creation.