Develop and Debug with CLion

Licensing

• CLion: Use CMU .edu email to get free, renewable 1-year license for CLion Professional Edition

Setup

• In CLion, select Check out from Version Control > Git, clone the repository. Alternatively, if you've already cloned the repository, choose Open and select the top level project directory.
• Go to File > Settings... (CLion > Preferences... on macOS)
  • Go to Build, Execution, Deployment > CMake. Create as many build profiles as you need. We recommend at least the following 3 for developers:
    • For development: Build type: Debug, CMake options: -DTERRIER_USE_ASAN=ON
    • For benchmarking: Build type: Release, CMake options: -DTERRIER_USE_JEMALLOC=ON
• After CLion processes the CMake project files, choose your build target and profile from the drop-down menu at the top-right of the IDE and build.

Customization

These are optional changes but will make CLion's behavior more consistent with our CI process.

• Go to File > Settings... (CLion > Preferences... on macOS) and then Editor > Inspections > C/C++ > General > Clang-Tidy. Uncheck Use IDE settings. This will force CLion to use the project's .clang-tidy file for real-time inspections. Click the link for Specify Clang-Tidy executable and point it to the binary installed by packages.sh. The default CLion-bundled version which may provide different warnings.
• Go to File > Settings... (CLion > Preferences... on macOS) and then Editor > Code Style. Check "Enable ClangFormat with clangd server. This will force CLion to use the project's .clang-format` file for formatting operations.

Debug

• Use CLion's built-in debugger to set breakpoints and step through the code.

Tips

• CLion caches the CMake project files, so if you add or remove files you'll want to refresh the build settings by going to Tools > CMake > Reset Cache and Reload Project.