Enable navigation to implementation for external libraries?

Hello!

Could you please describe the issue in more detail? Do I understand correctly that a function from the external library is used in a project source file and you want to navigate from that usage to its definition?

Imagine I am working in project A. Project A uses library B (also available in source code form on my machine). While browsing the source code of project A, I come across function F from library B. I can jump to the declaration of F in the header files of B, because CLion is intelligent enough to scan the includes of project A. But sometimes, I want to see the implementation of F. How can I explain to CLion to look inside the source code tree of library B, too? (And not only the header files of B)

Unfortunately, there is no straightforward way to do it now. Here is a related feature request: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/CPP-18380/Cannot-attach-other-directory-to-current-project

Currently, the only way is to include library B into project A.

In case of CMake, you can do it in the following way:

1. Create a fake CMakeLists.txt for library B.
2. Add a dummy target with the list of all library B sources to it. You can mark the dummy target with EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL keyword so it won't be built.
3. Create a top-level CMakeLists.txt where you add project A and a fake project B via add_subdirectory

That was helpful. Thank you!

If anybody wants a practical example. here you go:
I wanted to navigate through imgui functions, so

I created a folder dummyCmake where lays the following code

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.20)
project(dummy)
set(SOURCE ../imgui/examples/example_glfw_opengl3/main.cpp)
include_directories(../imgui/backends/imgui_impl_opengl3.h ../imgui/backends/imgui_impl_glfw.h)
add_library(dummy OBJECT ${SOURCE})
set_property(TARGET dummy PROPERTY EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL TRUE)

In my main Cmake I added

# Add dummy Cmake for imgui (to enable navigation through its functions)

add_subdirectory(vendor/dummyCmake/)