CLion Type and Call Hierarchies

Large C++ and Qt codebases are easier to work with when you can quickly answer two essential questions:

1. What does this class inherit from, and which classes inherit from it?

2. Who calls this function, and what does it call in turn?

In this episode of the CLion series, Jesper Pedersen explores CLion’s built-in Type Hierarchy and Call Hierarchy views, and compares their navigation model with the hierarchy tools familiar to Qt Creator users.

You will learn how to open the Hierarchy tool window, navigate class inheritance relationships, inspect callers and callees, and trace a function’s path through the codebase. This is especially valuable when you are onboarding to an unfamiliar project, debugging an unexpected execution path, or trying to understand how Qt event handling and model/view code fits together.

00:00 CLion code hierarchies overview

00:14 Open the Hierarchy tool window

00:46 Type Hierarchy: base and derived classes

01:33 Navigate inheritance relationships

02:23 Find function call sites

03:07 Call Hierarchy: callers and callees

04:15 Trace calls through the codebase

05:17 Method Hierarchy: what does it do?

06:10 Type and Call Hierarchy recap

All the CLion video in this series