News

What’s Next: A Roadmap for CLion 2021.2

CLion 2021.1 is now released along with the first bug-fix update 2021.1.1 addressing some of the most critical issues which unfortunately squeezed through our testing procedures. We do hope you are enjoying the update now and giving the new data flow analysis, Makefile and dynamic analysis in remote mode, and C/C++ postfix completion a try. We are listening to your feedback carefully and planning the upcoming bug-fix updates accordingly. It’s also time to move forward and see what CLion 2021.2 may look like!

Special thanks

Before we talk about the plans for the next release, let us first thank all participants of our Early Access Program! We are super grateful for every piece of feedback reported to us as it helps us polish and fine-tune the final release in many environments. And as a special thank you to the most active EAPers, we provide them with a complimentary 1-year CLion subscription!

  • Victor Sergienko
  • Tom Evers
  • Natalia Portillo

We’ll email you in the next few days with a code for buying a new subscription or extending your current one. The code can be passed on to a friend or colleague, too.

Roadmap for CLion 2021.2

Our priorities for 2021 and main directions for this year are still unchanged:

  1. Performance and responsiveness.
  2. Better C++ language engine.
  3. Quality and feature-parity throughout toolchains and project models.
  4. Bringing new value to embedded / automotive / remote workflows.

Find more details in this blog post.

As for the 2021.2 update, we plan it somewhere late July – early August. And here is what we will be working on during this release cycle:

Please note the following is only a preliminary plan, as some tasks will only be started but might not be finalized until after the actual release, or might be changed or rescheduled for various reasons. We cannot guarantee that all of the features listed below will be included in CLion 2021.2.
  • C++ language support

    • Top priority here is still bug-fixing and addressing performance issues, especially freezes.
    • Lifetime analysis.
  • Toolchains

    • Custom compiler – a way to specify supported features, header search paths, defines etc. if the compiler is not supported natively by CLion (CPP-9615).
    • Fixing issues with MSVC toolchain when CLion fails to get compiler information correctly.
  • Project models

    • Pre-configure step for Makefile projects (CPP-16924).
    • File templates for CMakeLists.txt (CPP-547) and main.cpp (CPP-5089) files.
    • Finally, we plan to start diving into CMake presets but the full support won’t be delivered in 2021.2 (CPP-22906).
  • Remote mode

    • WSL: support distributions installed by a custom path (CPP-11841).
    • WSL: remove running processes in WSL via ssh to significantly simplify WSL toolchain configuration in CLion.
    • We also plan to skip source synchronization in case of Docker to address issues like CPP-14315.
    • And finally, we’ll start adopting the IntelliJ-platform feature called Run Targets, which in case of CLion might help addressing the case when you are developing in one remote environment (e.g. Docker) and run/debug in another (e.g. embedded device).
  • Debugger. There is now a huge underline work going on in the heart of the debugger integration in CLion. It will result in significant UX improvements likely this year but it’s hard to name specific tasks for 2021.2 iteration. In other plans:

    • Remote LLDB Debug (CPP-7048).
    • Run in the external terminal debug option (CPP-1576).
    • Breakpoints in disassembly view (CPP-8910).
  • Profiling. There are a few directions here and it’s unlikely all of them will be addressed, but we plan to focus on:

    • Profiler integration for Apple Silicon (M1 chip).
    • Profiling in remote mode.
    • Attach to process for perf profiler.
  • Embedded development

    • Multi-threaded RTOS-aware debugging (CPP-17219). We will be focusing for now on ARM Cortex-M4/M3.
    • Live data in the debugger (CPP-22056).

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

Your CLion Team
JetBrains
The Drive to Develop

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