Why do you need a CMake project? (spoiler: you don't!)

Everything you do in CLion is done within the context of a project. Your project serves as the basis for coding assistance, bulk refactoring, coding style consistency, and other smart features available in CLion.

CLion incorporates a set of smart features, many of which depend on project-level information (included files, compiler flags, and linker options). This information allows CLion to parse/resolve your code correctly and therefore highlight, auto-complete, inspect, and navigate through it in an error-free and convenient way.

CLion does not provide its own project model for your code but supports the following formats:

• CMake

• Gradle (only the new Gradle C/C++ projects)

• JSON compilation database
• GNU Makefiles

So you don't need CMake specifically, but one of the project models listed above.

Learn more in our webhelp.