Tutorial: Configure CLion on macOS

Installation procedures

Before you start CLionLion installation on macOS, make sure your machine meets the hardware requirements, and the version of your macOS is 10.9.4+.

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You can always have multiple instances of CLion installed on the same OS, including both release and EAP builds.

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Alternatively, you can install CLion via the Homebrew package manager : brew cask install clion. However, this option is unofficial, as the CLion team is not involved in its maintenance or support.

After the installation or upgrade, you will be prompted to import, inherit, or create new settings for the IDE.

Required tools

CLion needs to be provided with C and C++ compilers. These tools may be pre-installed on your system: check it in Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolchains - the compiler and make detection should perform successfully.

If your system does not have working installations of compilers, the simplest solution is to install Xcode command line developer tools.

With Xcode command line tools, you get the Clang compiler installed by default. To check the compiler presence and its version, run clang --version.

Command line tools may not update automatically along with the system or Xcode update. This may cause error messages like invalid active developer path during project loading in CLion. To fix this, run the same xcode-select --install command, and the tools will be updated accordingly.

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As an alternative, you can separately install the compilers and then provide the paths in Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolchains.

Note that you can use multiple compilers for the needs of your project, see Compilers.

Configure toolchains

Now you need to configure the toolchain to work with, which means choosing the CMake executable, the build tool, the C/C++ compilers, and the debugger.

Navigate to Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolchains and edit the default toolchain, or click to add a new one.

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See Toolchains for general information.

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

CMake, build tool, and compilers

In the CMake field, specify the CMake binary that you want to use. You may stick to the bundled CMake, or use your custom CMake executable (see the minimum supported version in Software requirements).

By default, CLion will use bundled Ninja as the Build Tool. You can specify another build tool of your choice, for example, make.

The chosen CMake attempts to detect the compilers considering the packages installed on your system. If detection succeeds, the C Compiler and C++ Compiler fields are filled automatically:

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The detection of compilers fails when CMake cannot locate the appropriate tools. This may happen, for instance, if you installed them separately without the Xcode developer tools. In this case, you need to provide the actual paths manually.

Debugger

CLion for macOS comes with the bundled LLDB v 13.0.0 (the default debugger) and GDB v 11.1. You can also switch to a custom GDB (supported versions are 7.8.x-8.1.x). Select the debugger in Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | Toolchains:

Issues are possible when working with both bundled or custom GDB on macOS. To improve the behavior, enable the cidr.debugger.gdb.workaround.macOS.startupWithShell option in Registry (select Help | Find Action from the main menu and type Registry):

Note that enabling this option is not equivalent to setting set startup-with-shell off in your .gdbinit script.

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A combination of GDB and Clang implies certain limitations to debugging your projects on macOS. See STL renderers for GDB on macOS for details and a workaround.

Further steps

Now that you have CLion installed and configured, you may find the following articles useful for further steps of the development:

• Project formats supported in CLion

• Quick CMake tutorial

• Toolchains

• Compilers

• Run/Debug configurations