Is there a way to work on multiple projects in CLion?

Question

I'm looking for a way to work on multiple projects in parallel in CLion IDE.

For now I can only work on each project in a window at a time, but I'm looking for a solution similar to Eclipse IDE (see below) - being able to see my different projects' directories on a side bar and choosing the one I want, compiling it by itself, etc.

Is there a way to do it?

Answer 1

Yes: CLion doesn't allow you to open multiple projects from the menu because it uses the CMake system, which is script based.

However, CMake is quite capable of encompassing multiple projects, and CLion will correctly parse your CMake file and show all relevant directories in the project explorer.

Example

To do this, just like in Visual Studio, you need a parent "solution" and one or more child "projects".

Here is a simple CMake example in which "my_solution" references two child projects, "my_application" and "my_library". Here, my three folders are arranged:

• xxx/my_solution/CMakeLists.txt
• xxx/my_application/CMakeLists.txt
• xxx/my_library/CMakeLists.txt

And xxx/my_solution/CMakeLists.txt simply reads:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(my_solution)

add_subdirectory("${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/../my_library" "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/my_library_output")
add_subdirectory("${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/../my_application" "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/my_application_output")

Note that it is also permitted to put my_application and my_library within the my_solution directory, as in Visual Studio.

Answer 2

No. CLion either:

• opens a new window with the other project you want to work on
• closes your current project and opens the new one in the current window

as you can see in the documentation. I think this is wanted in their design; probably to maintain CLion fast and reactive...