CMake profiles

You can view and edit the CMake cache variables in the Cache variables table:

You can add new variables either in the CMake options field or in the CMakeLists.txt file. User-defined variables are placed on the top of the table. Values of the user-defined variables are highlighted in bold, while the changed values of the other variables are shown in italics:

To remove a variable from the CMake options field, select it in the table and click or press AltDelete. The variable will be removed from the table or its value will be set to default after resetting the CMake cache.

To discard changes made in the current session, select a variable and click or press Ctrl0Z.

Advanced CMake variables are hidden by default, but you can show them by selecting the Show advanced checkbox:

CLion also shows the short description in tooltips for CMake cache variables:

The IDE shows Boolean values as checkboxes. Next to the checkboxes, you can see the actiual values behind the Boolean variables. The following values are treated as False: 0, OFF, NO, N, IGNORE, NOTFOUND, empty strings, and values that end in the suffix -NOTFOUND. In all other cases, the value is treated as True.

When you check or uncheck the checkbox in the CLion user interface, the following pairs of values are used to configure option values: 0-1, OFF-ON, NO-YES, FALSE-TRUE, and N-Y. For any other values, the IDE converts the checkbox state to OFF-ON.

note

Named Boolean constants are case-insensitive.

In the Generator field, you can switch between CMake generators. Use the default value for the selected toolchain or set another generator from the predefined list:

Alternatively, you can set the generator in CMake options via -G. When the Generator field is used, CLion automatically updates CMake options and vice versa:

note

Actual built tools for a CMake profile are taken from the selected toolchain.

Use the Build type field to set one of the following CMake build types:

• Default (corresponds to the empty value of CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE).

• Debug (the default build type)

• Release

• RelWithDebInfo (Release with debugging information)

• MinSizeRel (Release optimized for size)

To refer to the build type in CMakeLists.txt, use the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE variable. For example:

if (CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE MATCHES Debug)
    add_definitions(-DDEBUG=1)
endif()

You can also create conditional statements in your code based on the current build type:

int main(int argc, const char* argv[]) {
#if DEBUG
...
#else
...
#endif

Custom build types

The list of the available build types is defined in the CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES command. The default value of this command is the four build types given above, but you can extend it to have other build types. For example:

# adding two custom build types to the cached value
# variable CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES should be defined before other definitions:
set(CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES "MyDebug;MyRelease" CACHE STRING "" FORCE)

After reloading the project, custom types will be available from the CMake settings:

Note that the custom types were added to the value Debug which was cached in CMakeCache.txt. So for example, if you add a new CMake profile, it will have its own CMakeCache.txt, and for this profile, the list of the available build types will contain your custom types only:

In the Build options field, you can set the options to be passed either to the build tool used by CMake or as command line parameters to CMake itself. These options will be used during the build phase.

Arguments for the underlying build tool (make, Ninja, or another one) 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.

When nothing is specified in this field, CLion uses default settings which depend on the selected environment. For example, the default setting for build processes running in parallel is -- -j max(cpucount * 0.8, cpucount - 2) for make and Ninja, while for Microsoft Visual C++ this option is not set and the field is empty.

You can pass additional environment variables to CMake generation and build via the Environment field of the CMake Settings dialog (navigate to Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | CMake).

note

The environment variables you specify in the profile affect CMake generation and build, but not the binary launch.

The overall impacting environment for CMake generation and build consists of:

• Parent environment

  To include parent environment, open the Environment Variables dialog by clicking or pressing ShiftEnter, and set the Include system environment variables checkbox. The values you specify additionally will be appended to system variables. Otherwise, when the checkbox is cleared, your custom values will overwrite the system ones.

• Toolchain environment

  These are the variables defined by the selected toolset (for example, vcvarsall.bat for MSVC or path variables like mingw/bin), or the variables from an environment initialization script.

  tip

  You can use toolchain environment scripts to set CMake variables from a file.

• CMake profile environment

  Your custom variables specified in the Environment field.

You can reference existing variables, including the parent environment variables, using the $VAR$ syntax. Note that such references are case-sensitive: for example, PATH=xxx:$PATH$ for Linux/macOS and Path=xxx;$Path$ for Windows. Referencing existing variables is currently not available for remote toolchains (CPP-15693).