Aiming for more! CLion 2020.3 Roadmap

Anastasia Kazakova

CLion has just been given a massive update from 2020.2, with Makefile project support, more C++20 features supported, new code analysis checks, Doctest framework integration, and much more. We have even more planned for the next release. Let’s take a look at what we have in store for the fall.

Special thanks

Before we move on to our plans for 2020.3, let’s follow our tradition of thanking everyone who has helped us identify various issues, usability glitches, and missing features during the Early Access Program. Thank you all! Without your contributions we would have never been able to have such a great release. Additionally, this time, we’d like to thank some people who have helped us particularly with testing and sharing detailed feedback on the new Makefile project support. All your help was very much appreciated! As a special thanks to some of the most active evaluators, we’d like to present them with a complimentary 1-year CLion subscription:

• Adam Ierymenko
• Jakub Czekański
• Julian Schneider
• Pavel Kunyavskiy
• Devendra Deshpande
• Charis Marangos

We’ll email you your coupon code in the next few days. If you’d like to pass this code on to a friend or colleague, that’s OK, too!

Roadmap: CLion 2020.3

Our main priorities for 2020 remain unchanged, and we are continuing to move in the direction we have set for CLion. Let’s have a look at what in particular we’re going to be working on in the near future to get us there.

1. Performance
   As IDE performance is our top priority, we’ll continue eliminating freezes and the issues around refactoring the code causing high CPU and memory usages. We are also planning to fix the UI freezes on Copy/Paste caused by autoformatting (CPP-17439).
2. C++ language support
   Apart from the regular bug fixing and tuning our Clangd-based engine even further, we are planning to start work on a few language specific features that might not be ready for the 2020.3 release. However, work on them will begin in this release cycle:
   • Qt-specific features are being considered, like project templates (CPP-8321), CMake live templates (CPP-14724), and some specific handling for Qt code constructs (CPP-1897).
   • We have plans for an initial set of MISRA checks.
3. Project models
   We’ll mostly focus on improving our recently released Makefile project support, fixing various issues and usability problems. We are also planning to make a few enhancements:
   • Add an action to automatically create Makefile Run/Debug configurations.
   • Improve our current make command output parsing analyzer by adding support for libtool and dolt (CPP-19549). This will help CLion load Makefile projects such as curl, bitcoin, lbrycrd, PHP, VLC, and many others.
   • Support pre-configuration steps before loading Makefile projects in CLion (CPP-16924).
4. Unit testing
   • CTest support is planned (CPP-905).
5. Debugger
   A few useful improvements are planned. Some are even under development already, but we didn’t manage to get them done in time for the 2020.2 release:
   • Ability to debug as root (CPP-7224).
   • Ability to disassemble on demand (CPP-9091).
6. Remote mode
   While reloading remote project performance is our top priority here, we are also planning to start work on native Docker support in CLion (CPP-13751). We hope there will be some initial results to present in the 2020.3 EAP.
7. Embedded development
   In regards to embedded development functionality, the next release cycle will be mostly about fixing issues and maintenance, so feel free to report any issues you come across to us!

That’s it! If you have any new feature requests, please send them to our issue tracker. We’re listening!

Your CLion team
JetBrains
The Drive to Develop

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