What's New in CLion 2024.3

In this release, our new language engine, CLion Nova, has received a whole host of essential features, such as various language-specific and UI updates. We’ve also fixed some major bugs, including those related to the memory footprint. To make the transition from CLion Classic easier, users are no longer required to go all the way to Advanced Settings to switch to the new engine – we’ve now also included toggles on the Welcome screen and in the Configuration menu.

Now, CLion Nova’s superiority over CLion Classic in terms of performance is even more obvious. For this reason, we believe that CLion Nova is ready to be the default engine not only for new users, but for everyone.

However, we understand that not all existing users are ready to make the switch, and we’d like to know why. With this in mind, we’d appreciate it if you could tell us why you prefer CLion Classic over CLion Nova.

You can share your feedback by selecting Help | Submit Feedback... from the main IDE menu. We’ll review it carefully and endeavor to fix any critical issues that might be holding you back from embracing CLion Nova.

We’ve made many improvements to CLion Nova in an effort to reduce its memory footprint. This is especially noticeable in large projects. Comparing the memory usage of a Chromium project in CLion Nova 2024.2 against the same project in 2024.3, in the new version, the IDE frontend uses 51% less memory, while the IDE backend uses 15% less.

For our users, this means:

• The IDE is now more responsive because it uses less memory and calls the garbage collector less often.
• The IDE is able to work faster and is more responsive to project changes.

The function call hierarchy shows caller and callee hierarchies and helps you better understand how your functions interact.

To view the call hierarchy, select a function in the editor, and then choose Navigate | Call Hierarchy from the main menu or use the shortcut ⌃⌥H (macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+H (Windows/Linux).

You can now select a predefined code style like LLVM, Google, Qt, or GNU via Settings | Editor | Code Style | C/C++ | Set from....

We’ve added an icon for recursive calls to the gutter. This makes it easier to see where you are using recursive functions in your code and to avoid potentially harmful situations like stack overflows. The icon is also displayed in the call hierarchy.

The Quick Definition popup shows you where and how class, function, method, and other project symbols are defined. To invoke it, place the caret at a symbol in the editor and press ⌥Space (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+| (Windows/Linux). You can also access it from the main menu via View | Quick Definition.

We’ve added a new Debug Servers configuration option to streamline the process of configuring debugging for embedded and remote development. It’s a separate section in Settings | Debugger where you can set up a debug server based on gdbserver.

First, you need to enable Debug Servers under Settings | Advanced Settings | Debugger. Then, you can open the Debug Servers dialog in Settings | Debugger or invoke Edit Debug Servers from the main toolbar switcher.

Please note that this is an experimental feature, which doesn’t work with PlatformIO yet. However, there is a workaround. We encourage you to try it and share your feedback with us. We would also be happy to arrange a quick call to learn more about your specific use cases and challenges.

In this release, we’ve extended support for Zephyr West by adding the ability to natively debug West projects. This makes it easy to configure and run debugging sessions in the IDE.

When you import your Zephyr West project, a West run/debug configuration is automatically created in the Run/Debug Configurations switcher. You can also create a new run/debug configuration via Run | Edit Configurations... in the main menu.

When debugging board peripherals like GPIO pins or timers, you can now immediately see the effects of your changes by editing peripheral registers in the Peripherals pane of the Debug tool window.

MISRA C++:2023 is the latest edition of MISRA C++, which provides guidelines for using C++17 in safety-critical systems. CLion’s static analysis toolset now includes a significant number of MISRA C++: 2023 checks.

If you’re debugging a computer vision or ML application that uses OpenCV, you can now view a two-dimensional OpenCV array as an image. The debugger displays such images in a separate dialog and offers various editing options and features like updating the image on stepping.

In the debugger’s Threads & Variables dialog, click View as image.

When debugging strings that store newline characters or JSON, XML, and HTML data, you can view them formatted according to their code style directly in the debugger. Press View next to a variable, and you'll be able to see the structured or raw data in a separate window.

You can now attach the debugger to unstarted local processes. These will then automatically trigger debugging when they are started. This feature is helpful when, for example, one part of your project is written in C++ and runs in CLion, while another is written in another language and runs in an external environment.

To configure it, select Run | Attach to an Unstarted Process... from the main menu.

We’ve updated the following bundled debuggers:

• GDB has been updated to 15.2.
• LLDB has been updated to 19.1.3.

The CMake bundle has been updated to 3.30.5.