Configuring Codelite for Unreal development under Linux?

[DKesserich]

I've been trying to find a good free IDE for Unreal dev in Linux, and of all that I've tried so far I like Codelite's interface the best, but I can't figure out how to get code completion/intellisense to work.

I'm running out of an Ubuntu distrobox on Bazzite, and Codelite workspaces get created properly (as far as I can tell), and they open and build fine, but the code editor flags a bunch of errors that aren't errors because it's not parsing the workspace properly and code completion won't complete for Unreal classes, etc.

I feel like something must be wrong with the Language Server config, but I don't know what, and since apparently nobody uses Codelite for Unreal dev (general advice is just use Rider) it's impossible to find any guides on how to set it up (the only one I've been able to find is 9 years old), and I don't even know where to begin looking for the problem.

[pratikrath126]

Hey there! Getting Intellisense to work with Unreal on Linux can be tricky outside of Rider. A few practical things to check:

1. Generate Compile Commands: Ensure you've generated the compile_commands.json for your project. You can usually do this by running the UnrealBuildTool with the -mode=GenerateProjectFiles -server -game -vscode flags (even for Codelite, the JSON is standard).
2. LSP / Clangd: Codelite's code completion usually relies on its internal parser or an LSP. If you're using LSP, make sure it's pointed to that compile_commands.json. Clangd is generally the most reliable for UE's massive codebase.
3. Include Paths: If Codelite is using its own parser, you might need to manually add the Intermediate/Build/Linux/... include paths to the project settings, but that's a lot of manual work compared to using the JSON.

If you can confirm if you have a compile_commands.json in your project root, that would be a good starting point!

[DKesserich]

compile_commands.json was the problem. With UE5 (not sure about older versions) when generating VSCode project files it creates a 'compileCommands_Default.json' and 'compileCommands_ProjectName.json' (the contents of the files appears to be identical, so I'm not sure why it makes them) in '.vscode'

I just tried copy-pasting the 'compileCommands_Default.json' into the project root and renaming it to 'compile_commands.json' and now everything's working. Awesome!

[UffeJakobsen]

I just tried copy-pasting the 'compileCommands_Default.json' into the project root and renaming it to 'compile_commands.json' and now everything's working. Awesome!

I guess that creating a symlink like this in your workspace root this would ensure that you (clangd) always use the updated files from .vscode

# ln -s .vscode/compileCommands_Default.json compile_commands.json

OR

# ln -s .vscode/compileCommands_ProjectName.json compile_commands.json