Clang-Tidy integration

Clang-Tidy is a Clang-based tool for static code analysis. CLion shows Clang-Tidy checks the same way as its own code inspections, with quick-fixes available via the -button or Alt+Enter:

General Clang-Tidy settings

Clang-Tidy checks are enabled by default, and you can see them as warnings (or messages of another severity level) in the editor.

Note that not all the checks are enabled by default. Here you can find details of the Clang-Tidy default configuration in CLion.

Configure the list of checks

Click to open the dialog where you can edit the list of checks:
To quickly find a particular check, start typing its name when the dialog is in focus.
On the left, you see the detailed description of each check from the official Clang-Tidy documentation website. You can also see a short overview from the editor. Hover the cursor over the highlighted code, in the tooltip that appears, click and select Show Inspection Description:
You can also enable/disable particular checks manually using the Clang-Tidy command line format.
Specify a comma-separated list of positive and negative globs: positive globs add subsets of checks, while negative globs (prefixed with "-") remove them.
For example, the following command line will disable all default checks -* and enable all the clang-analyzer-* checks except for the clang-analyzer-cplusplus* ones:
-*,clang-analyzer-*,-clang-analyzer-cplusplus*

Options for particular checks

Some Clang-Tidy checks have options, which are either additional or substantial for the check (like those for readability-identifier-naming).

To configure options for a particular check, use the Configure Clang-Tidy Checks Options dialog. For example, you can force the modernize-use-nullptr check to replace any NULL-like macros with nullptr:

Tuning checks in the editor

In addition to the Inspections Settings dialog, you can disable a single check, a group of checks, or the entire Clang-Tidy inspection from the editor. These actions respectively update the Clang-Tidy command line.

Configuring checks from the context menu

To suppress a Clang-Tidy check for a particular line, use the Suppress "check_name" for line option. CLion will add a // NOLINT comment at the end of the selected line.

Configuration files

With .clang-tidy files, you can set per-directory configurations: for each source file, Clang-Tidy will attempt to read configuration from .clang-tidy in the closest parent directory.

To open the .clang-tidy configuration file used by the current source file, select Edit clang-tidy file for <current file> in the widget on the status bar:

If there's no .clang-tidy configuration available for the currently opened source file, you can create one by selecting Create .clang-tidy file in the widget:

The new file will include settings configured in Settings | Editor | Inspections | C/C++ - Static Analysis Tools - Clang-Tidy.

.clang-tidy files are in the YAML format. For a syntax example, let's enable all the Clang-Tidy checks and provide the additional option to modernize-use-nullptr:

                Checks: '*'
                CheckOptions:
                - key:             modernize-use-nullptr.NullMacros
                value:           NULL,CUSTOM_NULL
            

By default, .clang-tidy files take precedence over the IDE settings. When analyzing a source file, CLion uses the settings from a reachable configuration file (located in the current directory or in one of the parent directories). If there is no such file, CLion relies on its own settings.

To change this behavior, clear the Prefer .clang-tidy files over IDE settings checkbox in Settings | Editor | Inspections - C/C++, Static Analysis Tools, Clang-Tidy.

Custom Clang-Tidy executable

You can work with your own Clang-Tidy executable instead of the bundled one (for example, when you want to create custom checks and use them in CLion).

Provide the path to your custom Clang-Tidy binary in Settings | Languages & Frameworks | C/C++ (or click Specify Clang-Tidy executable in the Inspections Settings dialog).

This setting is IDE-wide: your custom Clang-Tidy binary will be used for all projects.

Notification on Clang-Tidy updates

CLion bundles Clang-Tidy from the corresponding LLVM revision, so when CLion releases a Clang update, the bundled Clang-Tidy executable gets updated to a newer version, and the IDE shows a notification:

Click Review to open a list of the available new checks and their activation state according to the Clang-Tidy inspection settings. You can enable or disable the checks in this dialog, and Clang-Tidy settings will change accordingly.

If you use a custom configuration file instead of the IDE settings, this notification will also warn you that clang-tidy files may overwrite your IDE settings.

Last modified: 11 January 2023