CMake

If this checkbox is selected, CLion automatically reloads your project when you edit the CMakeLists.txt file.

If this checkbox is cleared, CLion displays a pop-up message where you can choose to reload the current project manually or enable the automatic reload (which leads to selecting this checkbox):

However, if some external changes take place (for example, an update from version control), the project reloads anyway.

In this field, select a CMake profile. You can edit, delete, or add profiles here.

• Click the button to add a profile to the list. By default, profile is named according to the currently selected build type and toolchain.

• Click the button to delete the selected profile from the list.

• Click the button to create a copy of the selected profile.

Note: this list of CMake profiles determines the profiles available in the Run/Debug Configurations switcher and the list of resolve contexts.

From this drop down list, select the desired build type.

By default, in case this field has not been set manually, the type is Debug.

Note that the Default option corresponds to the empty value of CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE.

From this drop down list, select the desired toolchain. This list consists of toolchains you created in the Toolchain settings dialog.

If nothing is selected, then CLion uses the toolchain that is currently set as default (the first one in the toolchains list).

In this field, specify additional CMake options, separated by spaces.

For example, here you can specify a custom CMake generator via -G.

tip

You can always press Shift+Enter or click to type in the editor window, each option on a new line.

Specify here the desired location for the generated CMake files. This path can be either absolute (for example, c:\CLion_Projects\My_Project\cmake-build-debug) or relative to the current project root (for example, cmake-build-debug).

Leave this field empty to use the default location, which is cmake-build-[buid_type] under the project root.

This setting is saved in .idea/workspace.xml and is not supposed to be shared.

note

If you select a subdirectory of the project root as the generation output, the IDE marks the files of that subdirectory as excluded from the project and considers them as non-project files. Navigation actions like Navigate to file will not work for these files.

In this field, specify the options to be passed either to the build tool used by CMake or as command line parameters to CMake itself.

Options from this field are passed to CMake during the build phase (see the description of the CMake build command for more information).

For the arguments to be used by the underlying build tool (make, Ninja, or another one), they should be preceded with --. For example, if you specify -j 5 --clean-first -- -d -p, then -j 5 --clean-first will be processed by CMake, while -d -p will be passed to the build tool.

If nothing is specified in this field, CLion uses the default settings, which depend on the selected environment. For example, if the make generator is selected, the default value is -- -j <number_of_hardware_cores>, while for Microsoft Visual C++ this field is empty.

tip

You can always click to type the required options in the editor window.

Click to invoke the Environment Variables pane and select there the environment variables to be passed to CMake on the generation phase.

• Use , , and buttons to manage the list of custom variables.

• Select the Include system environment variables checkbox link if you want the values you specify to be appended to system variables. Otherwise, when the checkbox is cleared, your custom values will overwrite the system ones.