A new version of KDevelop has been released with improved C++ support powered by Clang, along with CMake and QML/JavaScript support.

KDevelop is a free IDE for the KDE platform on Unix and Linux. It focuses on support for C++, Python, PHP and JavaScript/QML, using external compilers such as Clang and GCC rather than having its own compiler. 

One major change in the new version is the replacement of the original C++ parser and semantic analysis plugin with a more powerful one based on Clang from the LLVM project. The original parser was popular because of features including semantic highlighting and advanced code completion, but the need to maintain compatibility with C++ language standards such as C++11 was a drain on resources, so the developers have moved to using a Clang based language plugin. This provides support for the latest C++ language standard, and enables true C and Objective-C language support.

Another change sees the removal of the hand-written CMake interpreter in favour of using meta data provided by upstream CMake itself. This is achieved by using a JSON compilation database that's a collection of exact compilation commands for a set of files. This enables the passing of compilation flags to a tool on the command-line, following a special token. This change does mean that the developers have removed some of the useful advanced CMake integration features, such as the wizards to add files to a target. The plan is to bring back the removed functionality in the future.

This release sees the official introduction of support for QML and JavaScript code. You've actually been able to use this functionality for some time, but the experimental plugins have now been officially included and are now supported. Support for QMake is likewise officially added having been 'experimentally' supported for some time.

In terms of other languages, KDevelop 5 continues to officially support Python 3 and PHP, with experimental playground support for Ruby, and plans to integrate basic Go and Rust support. A list of the other changes to the new version can be found in the What's New pages on KFunc.

More Information

KDevelop

What's New In KDevelop 5

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