CMake profiles

Compiler flags

In CLion, there are two ways to specify compiler flags: either in CMake options of a profile, or right in the CMakeLists.txt script.

Generators

In the CMake options field, you can specify a CMake generator via -G. For example, in the case of Ninja:

For Ninja Multi-Config, use -G "Ninja Multi-Config". Note that CLion will use only the configuration that corresponds to the build type of the current profile (see Current limitations).

You can set up any CMake generator available for your platform and use different generators in different CMake profiles if necessary.

When building your project, make sure to select the desired profile in the configuration switcher:

Note that for a CMake profile, the actual built tools are taken from the selected toolchain. If you specify the generator other than Makefiles, the Make path in the toolchain settings will be ignored.

Current limitations

• CLion uses CMake File API, which first appeared in CMake v3.14. However, CLion supports it starting from the update introduced in CMake v3.15, so if you decide to switch from the bundled CMake, make sure to use version 3.15.x or later.

• For multi-config generators like Ninja Multi-Config, Xcode, or Visual Studio, CLion uses only the configuration that corresponds to the build type specified in the CMake profile (CPP-20890).

Build types

Use the Build type field to set one of the following CMake build types:

• Default (corresponds to the empty value of CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE).

• Debug (the default build type)

• Release

• RelWithDebInfo (Release with debugging information)

• MinSizeRel (Release optimized for size)

To refer to the build type in CMakeLists.txt, use the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE variable. For example:

You can also create conditional statements in your code based on the current build type:

Custom build types

The list of the available build types is defined in the CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES command. The default value of this command is the four build types given above, but you can extend it to have other build types. For example:

# adding two custom build types to the cached value # variable CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES should be defined before other definitions: set(CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES "MyDebug;MyRelease" CACHE STRING "" FORCE)

After reloading the project, custom types will be available from the CMake settings:

Note that the custom types were added to the value Debug which was cached in CMakeCache.txt. So for example, if you add a new CMake profile, it will have its own CMakeCache.txt, and for this profile, the list of the available build types will contain your custom types only:

Build options

In the Build options field, you can set the options to be passed either to the build tool used by CMake or as command line parameters to CMake itself. These options will be used during the build phase.

Arguments for the underlying build tool (make, Ninja, or another one) should be preceded with --. For example, if you specify -j 5 --clean-first -- -d -p, then -j 5 --clean-first will be processed by CMake, while -d -p will be passed to the build tool.

When nothing is specified in this field, CLion uses default settings which depend on the selected environment. For example, if the make generator is set, the default value of this field is -- -j <number_of_hardware_cores>, while for Microsoft Visual C++ this field is empty.

Environment variables

You can pass additional environment variables to CMake generation and build via the Environment field of the CMake Settings dialog (navigate to Settings / Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | CMake).