CLion

CLion is the C and C++ IDE from JetBrains for desktop, embedded and automotive projects, free for non-commercial use and sold per user for commercial work.

CLion gives developers one place to write, build, debug and test native code, whatever build system a project uses. JetBrains, the company behind IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm and Rider, makes it and has built developer tools since 2000. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and opens CMake, Makefile, Meson and compilation database projects out of the box. Firmware and desktop applications share one toolset, because cross-compilation and on-chip debugging are native capabilities rather than add-ons. The editor offers semantic code completion, project-wide refactorings such as Rename and Change Signature, and a search for every usage of a symbol. Clang-tidy runs on the fly beside CLion's own inspections, and built-in checks cover a subset of the MISRA C and MISRA C++ rules. The debugger works with GDB and LLDB and shows breakpoints, watches, memory, threads and a side-by-side disassembly view. For hardware it connects to OpenOCD and SEGGER J-Link servers, with Peripheral View for ARM devices and RTOS thread views for FreeRTOS and ThreadX. A CPU profiler built on Perf or DTrace, Valgrind Memcheck, a Database tool window, AI Chat and Full Line code completion complete the set. Professional C and C++ developers are its audience, from a single programmer to teams inside large organizations. Embedded engineers who target ARM, Xtensa chips such as the ESP32, RISC-V or AVR boards get support for that hardware in the IDE itself. Automotive teams catch common MISRA violations as they type instead of waiting for a separate analysis run. Developers who mix C++ and Rust stay in one IDE, since the bundled Rust plugin brings completion, debugging, testing and Cargo integration. Qt developers will find a tutorial for their projects in the CLion help. Git work stays inside CLion, where developers commit, compare branches and resolve merge conflicts before rerunning tests in Google Test, Catch, Boost.Test or Doctest. Through JetBrains Gateway the IDE backend can run on a remote machine while a thin client stays local, and WSL or Docker toolchains build a project in a Linux environment. STM32 projects created in STM32CubeMX and PlatformIO projects open directly, without CMake written by hand. Plugins from JetBrains Marketplace, such as Bazel for CLion, carry it to further build systems. It fits engineers whose C and C++ code has to run on a microcontroller as surely as on a desktop.