C

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These questions were shown only to the developers who chose C as one of their three primary programming languages.

Which C standard do you regularly use?

44%

47%

C99

33%

41%

C11

16%

16%

C17/C18

15%

30%

Embedded C

17%

10%

I'm not sure

2%

3%

Other

Which IDE / editor do you use the most for C development?

34%

30%

Visual Studio Code

22%

21%

CLion

14%

10%

Visual Studio

11%

11%

Vi / Vim

6%

3%

Emacs

Despite all of the measures we've taken to secure a representative pool of respondents, the results may be slightly skewed towards users of JetBrains products, as they are more likely to take the survey.

Which unit-testing frameworks do you regularly use?

34%

46%

I don’t write unit tests for C

29%

23%

I write unit tests but don’t use any frameworks

13%

16%

Google Test

10%

4%

CUnit

5%

4%

CppUnit

The percentage of the developers who don’t write unit tests for C has finally decreased after a couple of years and is down to about one-third. Meanwhile, the share of those who write unit tests with no specific framework increased by 5 percentage points.

Which unit-testing frameworks do you regularly use?

34%

21%

I don’t write unit tests for C

29%

35%

I write unit tests but don’t use any frameworks

13%

15%

Google Test

10%

8%

CUnit

5%

4%

CppUnit

Which project models or build systems do you regularly use?

49%

44%

CMake

43%

41%

Makefiles

17%

26%

Visual Studio project

10%

6%

Ninja

6%

5%

Custom build system

The Visual Studio project model has lost some of its popularity among C developers since 2021. These days, they tend to select CMake and Makefiles more often.

Which project models or build systems do you regularly use?

49%

64%

CMake

43%

46%

Makefiles

17%

24%

Visual Studio project

10%

14%

Ninja

6%

9%

Custom build system

Which dependency managers do you use in your projects?

27%

I use a system package manager

6%

vcpkg

5%

Nuget

3%

Conan

2%

build2

1%

Hunter

2%

Other

58%

None

Which compilers do you regularly use?

80%

82%

GCC

38%

34%

Clang

18%

15%

Compiler for microcontrollers (like Keil, C51 C Compiler, IAR, etc.)

17%

17%

MSVC

7%

11%

Intel

The share of the Intel compiler has dropped by one-third among C developers in 2022. Among C++ developers, the trend is the opposite.

Which compilers do you regularly use?

80%

80%

GCC

38%

42%

Clang

18%

44%

Compiler for microcontrollers (like Keil, C51 C Compiler, IAR, etc.)

17%

25%

MSVC

7%

5%

Intel

3%

1%

Custom

4%

3%

Other

In CLion, you can use GCC-based, Clang, MSVC, and IAR compilers. For rare or custom cases, a custom compiler feature enables any arbitrary compiler in CLion.

Thank you for your time!

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