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Tutorial: Configure CLion on Windows

Last modified: 19 January 2022

On Windows, CLion toolchains include the make utility, C and C++ compilers, debugger executables and the environment. You can select one of the pre-defined toolchain setups (MinGW, Cygwin, Microsoft Visual C++, or WSL), Remote Host, Docker) or configure a custom toolchain (System):

Windows toolchain options

Watch this video for an overview of Windows toolchain options:

tip

If you don't need to configure custom tools or don't want to install additional software on your system, stick to MinGW (default) as it works out-of-the-box using the MinGW toolset bundled in CLion.

For details on Remote Host toolchains, see Full Remote Mode. If you are working with a Docker container, see Docker toolchain.

MinGW

CLion bundles a version of the MinGW toolset for quick setup. The exact version bundled is MinGW-w64 9.0 with languages=c,c++, posix threads, and seh exceptions. You can use this bundled toolchain or switch to a custom MinGW installation.

Install MinGW (optional)

Configure a MinGW toolchain

  1. Go to File | Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolchains.

    Click Add toolchain and select MinGW to add a new MinGW toolchain.

  2. In the Toolset field, you will see Bundled MinGW, which is the default option. If required, open the field to select from the list of other available installations:

    List of MinGW installations

  3. Wait until the tools detection finishes.

    Bundled MinGW toolchain

  4. Select the Debugger: you can use either bundled GDB, your MinGW GDB, or a custom GDB binary.

    The recommended option is bundled GDB, since it is guaranteed to include Python support required for CLion data renderers.

  5. If required, specify the script to initialize the environment.

  6. Click Apply when all the tools are set correctly.

tip

When using a custom MinGW installation, if CLion cannot detect compilers or make, double-check the installed packages in MinGW Installation Manager.

Cygwin

Windows Subsystem for Linux

You can use WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux, as your working environment in CLion on Windows 10 (starting the Fall Creators Update version 1709, build 16299.15).

WSL toolchain enables you to build projects using CMake and compilers from Linux and run/debug on WSL without leaving CLion running on your Windows machine.

note

Refer to our WSL guide for details on setting up WSL on your system and configuring WSL toolchains in CLion.

WSL toolchain

Microsoft Visual C++

MSVC compiler

CLion supports the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler that ships with Visual Studio 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019.

Note that msbuild is not supported: CLion runs CMake with the NMAKE generator instead.

For the case when your code includes MSVC extensions, CLion provides the support for:

  • __uuidof, __forceinline, __unaligned, and __alignof keywords;

  • pointer type attributes: __ptr32, __ptr64, __uptr, __sptr;

  • MSVC built-in data types: (unsigned) __int8, (unsigned) __int16, (unsigned) __int32, (unsigned) __int64, __wchar_t;

  • additional format specifiers, such as %I32 and %I64;

  • the clang's -fms-extensions flag.

Clang-cl compiler

As an alternative compiler, you can use clang-cl - the MSVC-compatible compiler driver for Clang. CLion supports clang-cl version 8.0 and later.

Note that currently the -T clangcl options can't be picked up if the bundled CMake is in use along with the Visual Studio toolchain setup (CPP-18848).

MSVC debugger

The MSVC toolchain debugger is implemented on top of LLDB, and it can work with native visualizers from the Visual Studio installation or from your project.

To enable native visualizers support and set the desired diagnostics level, select the Enable NatVis renderers for LLDB checkbox in Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Debugger | Data Views | C/C++:

MSVC NatVis

CLion automatically generates one-line summaries for all structures not covered by Natvis and highlights them to increase readability. Also, the built-in formatters provide visualization for wide/Unicode strings (wchar_t, char16_t, char32_t).

If you have custom native visualizers in your project, CLion will use them as well.

MSVC debug with custom NatVis

CLion supports most of the Natvis customization features, such as ArrayItems, IndexListItems, LinkedListItems, TreeItems, Inheritable attribute, Format specifiers, and CustomListItems.

System toolchain

The System toolchain on Windows allows configuring make, compilers, and debugger without selecting a predefined toolset and environment, similarly to Linux and macOS. Use this toolchain option for embedded development cases like using ARM or for other custom setups.

Initializing the toolchain environment via a script

You can point CLion to the script that initializes the environment for your project without the need to set the variables manually. This is helpful, for example, when you need to initialize compiler variables, add custom ones, or modify the PATH.

Specifying an environment script is available for all toolchains. However, it is not supported for CMake presets at the moment (CPP-26576).

Environment sourcing will happen on the first actual usage of the toolchain in a CMake profile or upon loading a Makefile project.

Clang compiler on Windows

With CMake 3.15, it has become possible to use the Clang compiler on Windows with the MinGW-w64/MinGW toolchain.

However, the LLVM Clang for Windows is built using Microsoft Visual Studio, and all the built-in macros and include search paths are set up for use with Visual Studio. So if you take Clang from the LLVM repository, it will not work correctly when configured with the MinGW toolchain. One of the possible workarounds is described below.

Set up the Clang compiler for MinGW

  1. Install MSYS2.

  2. Download the following packages with the pacman tool (use the pacman -S package_name command):

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-clang

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-lld

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-gdb

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-make

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-polly

    • mingw-w64-x86_64-compiler-rt

    This way, you will get the Clang compiler which is built with mingw-w64 and has paths and macros that correspond to this toolchain.

  3. Go to Settings / Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolchains, create a MinGW toolchain, and set up the tools from MSYS.

    After specifying the Toolset, check the automatically detected tools and make sure to switch to Clang in the C Compiler and C++ Compiler fields.

    MinGW MSYS toolchain

note

With this new toolchain configured, you can build the project and start using the Clang's advances tools, such as profile-guided optimization. Take a look at our detailed blogpost for instructions.

GDB on Windows

In the case of MinGW, CLion includes the bundled GDB (version 10.2). For Cygwin, you need to install the GDB package in the Cygwin Package Manager, as described in the Cygwin section of this guide.

You can also switch to a custom GDB binary. In this case, the supported GDB versions are 7.8.x-11.1.

Note that for GDB 8.0 and later, debugger output is redirected to CLion console by default. To enable opening an external console window for application input/output, go to Help | Find Action or press Ctrl+Shift+A, search for Registry, and set the following key: cidr.debugger.gdb.workaround.windows.forceExternalConsole.

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