Alfred

A CLion dev environment butler for embedded and multi-chip projects.

Alfred saves your current CLion project setup and IDE settings into named profiles, then lets you switch between them when you move between chips, toolchains, SDKs, debuggers, or board configurations.

Why Alfred

CLion keeps many development choices in project and IDE settings: toolchains, CMake presets, SDK paths, debugger settings, embedded tools, and other local configuration. Once a setup works, recreating it later by hand is slow and easy to get wrong.

Alfred treats a known-good CLion setup as a named profile. Save it when the environment is correct, update it when the setup changes, and switch back to it when you need that environment again.

Platform Support

Alfred is a platform-independent CLion plugin. The same alfred.zip release artifact can be installed on CLion for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Profiles are snapshots of local CLion settings, so they may contain machine-specific paths such as compiler locations, SDK paths, debugger paths, or probe tools. For cross-machine or cross-OS work, keep separate profiles for each machine or normalize those paths in CLion before saving the profile.

Install

Local Install from GitHub Releases

Use this when you want to install Alfred from a release zip:

1. Open the Alfred Releases page.
2. Download alfred.zip from the latest release.
3. In CLion, open Settings | Plugins.
4. Click the gear icon.
5. Choose Install Plugin from Disk....
6. Select the downloaded alfred.zip.
7. Restart CLion when prompted.

Install from Marketplace

Use this when Alfred is available from the JetBrains Marketplace.

1. Open Settings | Plugins.
2. Select the Marketplace tab.
3. Search for Alfred.
4. Click Install.
5. Restart CLion when prompted.

After installation, Alfred is available from:

Tools > Alfred

Releases

Every push to master builds alfred.zip with GitHub Actions. Versioned tags publish a GitHub Release and attach the installable plugin zip.

The release workflow builds on Linux only because IntelliJ Platform plugin zips are Java artifacts and are not OS-specific. The generated alfred.zip is the one file users install on every CLion-supported platform.

To publish a release:

git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

Quick Start

1. Open your CLion project.
2. Configure CLion for one target chip or environment.
3. Go to Tools > Alfred > Save Current Config as Profile....
4. Enter a profile name, for example stm32f4-debug.
5. Change CLion settings for another target.
6. Save another profile, for example hpm6750-release.
7. Use Tools > Alfred > Switch Profile... to choose the environment you want.
8. Close and reopen CLion to activate the switched profile.

Daily Workflow

Save a New Profile

Use:

Tools > Alfred > Save Current Config as Profile...

Use this when you have configured CLion for a new chip, board, toolchain, SDK, debugger, or CMake setup and want to keep it as a reusable profile.

Profile names are cleaned automatically so they are safe for the filesystem. For example, spaces and unusual characters are converted to -.

Update the Current Profile

Use:

Tools > Alfred > Update Active Profile

Use this after changing settings that belong to the profile you are already working in. You do not need to remember and retype the profile name.

If no active profile is set yet, Alfred lets you choose which saved profile to update.

Switch Profiles

Use:

Tools > Alfred > Switch Profile...

Choose a saved profile, then close and reopen CLion. Alfred applies the profile as CLion shuts down so the next startup loads the selected environment cleanly.

This restart step is intentional. Many CLion and IntelliJ Platform settings are kept live in memory while the IDE is running. Applying a full profile during runtime can be overwritten by the IDE later, so Alfred stages the switch for the next startup instead.

What Alfred Saves

Alfred snapshots the project and IDE configuration that normally defines a CLion development environment:

• Project .idea settings.
• CMakePresets.json.
• CMakeUserPresets.json.
• CLion IDE configuration files from the CLion config directory.

It skips runtime/cache data that should not be copied between profiles, including:

• Installed plugins.
• Logs and temp files.
• Event-log metadata.
• Lock files.
• IDE database files.

Where Profiles Are Stored

Profiles are stored in your CLion config directory, not inside the project:

<CLion config directory>/clion-dev-envs/

This keeps profiles available across projects and avoids polluting your source tree with local IDE snapshots.

Alfred also migrates older project-local profiles from:

<project>/clion-dev-envs/

when it finds them.

Practical Notes

• Save or update a profile after you finish configuring a target.
• Switch profiles before starting work on a different target.
• Restart CLion after switching so the selected IDE and project settings are loaded consistently.
• Keep source-controlled project files separate from local CLion profile data.

License

Alfred is released under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.