Clion how to add files to a project

Question

This seems really basic. How can i add files to a project without having to manually edit the CMakeLists.txt.

For example source files in another directory

Solution 1

CLion parses the CMakeLists.txt and uses it to generate a project view, but I believe the only way to add files to the project is to edit the CMakeLists.txt to include those files. I expect that eventually this will change similar to the way IntelliJ integrates with a pom.xml file in a Java project, but for now you edit the CMakeLists.txt.

Solution 2

There is also a way to make CLion to add any cpp and h files (I don't know why don't they do it by default) and is to add this line:

file(GLOB SOURCES
    *.h
    *.cpp
)

and also edit the line of:

add_executable(ClionProject ${SOURCE_FILES} ${SOURCES})

In this example: ClionProject is actually the name of the project. SOURCES_FILES and SOURCES can be whatever you want.

Another good idea is to go to File -> Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> CMake and tick on "Automatic reload CMake project on editing"

Here is a good starting tutorial: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/clion/2016.3/quick-cmake-tutorial.html

Comments

[usr1234567]

CMake is a build-system and not a project management. If you only want to add a header, you don't need to do anything. Please be more precise with your question.

[jkj yuio]

Yes, the question relates to limitations with clion not with cmake

[kmac]

+1 You really don't want clion editing your CMakeLists.txt. You can look into file(GLOB ...) and file(GLOB_RECURSE ...) to automatically find newly added source. But you'll have to force CMake to be re-run in order for them to be added.

[legalize]

@kmac I'm not a fan of the GLOB approach, particularly if you have platform specific sources and you want to conditionally add them to the project. For simple projects, it's fine, but I prefer adding the files explicitly.

[kmac]

Yes, this tends to be a hotly debated subject. I think that it is a very useful tool, though not always appropriate. Even in complex projects, if components are broken down into smaller libraries (or even source sub-folders), GLOB can still work well if used judiciously. We're happily working away like this on a project with 400k+ lines of code -- no regrets :).