Looking Forward to 2023 in CLion

Anastasia Kazakova

It has only been a few weeks since the CLion 2022.3 release, which brought a better user experience across the board, from projects with only a couple of C/C++ files to complex CMake-based applications. Today, we are ready to share our product plans for 2023, and especially the upcoming 2023.1 release. This blog post will cover:

• The CLion 2022.3.1 bug-fix update
• The roadmap for CLion 2023.1

CLion 2022.3.1 bug-fix update

Before we share our plans for the future, let’s make sure you’ve got the latest 2022.3.1 bug-fix update. There were several fixes that we didn’t quite manage to get into the big release a few weeks ago, but they are now available in this update. If you haven’t upgraded to v2022.3, now is definitely a good time to do so!

The highlights of this update:

• CUDA:
  • We fixed a crash in Clangd on CUDA projects which prevented inlay hints from working (CPP-31155).
• CMake:
  • CLion now offers CMake keyword completion for any keywords that may appear in the command (CPP-30015):
  • We added a warning that’s shown when a target name is incompatible with the linker (CPP-30431).
  • We fixed the Reformat action for CMake and removed unwanted spaces.
• Unit testing:
  • We added support for the new xml-format-version attribute from Catch2 v3.
  • We added the ability to use Tab to navigate through fields in Unit Test run/debug configurations.
• New UI:
  • We restored actions to run with valgrind/coverage/profile in the new UI.
  • The option to display editor tabs on multiple rows has been added to the new UI (IDEA-29509).

There are also other fixes for code completion, the debugger, and the Docker toolchain. The full release notes are available here.

Download build 223.8214.51 from our website, through the Toolbox App, as a snap for Ubuntu, or via patch from the IDE.

DOWNLOAD CLION

Roadmap for CLion 2023.1

The following is only a preliminary plan and not a promise or commitment. Tasks might be changed or rescheduled for various reasons. We cannot guarantee that all of the issues listed below will be addressed in CLion 2023.1.

• C++ language support: CLion received support for C++20 modules in 2022.3, and now we need to improve the IDE bug reporting, address user reports, inspect the new CMake 3.25 modules support, and make other improvements. Meanwhile, we encourage you to start writing modularized code with CLion and share your feedback with us.
• QML syntax support:This task was planned for 2022.3, but we decided to postpone it to achieve better quality. We plan to invest more resources in QML and make support for it available in v2023.1.
• Project models and toolchains:
  • Before the next release, we plan to polish the C/C++ single file configuration workflow, which allows you to run a single file without any project model.
  • We plan to support configure and build presets up to version 6.
  • We plan to significantly improve the Docker workflow by fixing several of the most annoying issues.
  • While Meson is not the most popular project model for C++, it definitely has a dedicated audience, who were recently quite excited when they noticed some activity on this feature request. It’s unlikely that Meson support will be added in v2023.1, but we can confirm that the investigation and analysis for the task has indeed started. We plan to dedicate some resources to it in 2023.
• Debugger and Embedded development:
  • The ability to use Disassembler on demand during a debug session has been in development for a while now. We hope to polish and release it in 2023.1 or later 2023.x updates.
  • We plan to rework the Attach to Process dialog to make it more convenient to use by providing more information and improving the view in general.
  • In order to improve multi-threaded application debugging, we plan to implement the ability to stop/resume individual threads (CPP-31413).
  • For Embedded developers, we’ll work on improving the Serial plugin and a plugin for PlatformIO.
  • For developers of curses-like terminal applications, we plan to improve the console used for processing input/output when running and debugging such programs in CLion.
• Our work on the new UI introduced as Beta in 2022.3 will be continued. Give it a try and share your feedback with us so that we can improve it further!

Finally, we’d like to talk about our contribution to another tool from the JetBrains family – Fleet, our next-generation IDE, which is currently in preview. Fleet has joined the C++ family by adding support for C++. Its scope is currently different from that of CLion, but it’s based on the same customized clangd engine. That means CLion also benefits from all of the bug-fixes and enhancements implemented in clangd for Fleet.

That’s it! Have an idea for a feature? Share it with us in the issue tracker or in the comments.

Your CLion team
JetBrains
The Drive to Develop

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