intellij.asciidoc

Table of Contents

• intellij
  • plugins

intellij

The intellij commandlet allows to install, configure, and launch IntelliJ. To launch IntelliJ for your current workspace and devonfw-ide installation, simply run: devon intellij

You may also supply additional arguments as devon intellij «args». These are explained by the following table:

Table 1. Usage of devon intellij

Argument(s)	Meaning
--all	if provided as first arg then to command will be invoked for each workspace
setup	setup IntelliJ (install or update)
add-plugin «id»	install an additional plugin
run	launch IntelliJ (default if no argument is given)
start	same as run
ws-up[date]	update workspace
ws-re[verse]	reverse merge changes from workspace into settings
ws-reverse-add	reverse merge adding new properties
create-script	create launch script for this IDE, your current workspace and your OS

There are variables that can be used for IntelliJ. These are explained by the following table:

Table 2. Variables of devonfw-ide for intelliJ

Variable	Meaning
INTELLIJ_VERSION	The version of the tool IntelliJ to install and use.
INTELLIJ_EDITION	The edition of the tool IntelliJ to install and use. By default the Community edition will be installed. If you want to use the Ultimate Edition, the value has to be set to ultimate. The Ultimate edition requires a license. The user has to buy the license separately and it is not part of devonfw-ide. The devonfw-ide only supports download and installation.
EXTRA_JAVA_VERSION	You can set this to a different (newer) version of Java used to launch your IDE (other than JAVA_VERSION that is used to build your project)
INTELLIJ_DISABLE_OPEN_WORKSPACE	true will disable that your workspace folder will be opened automatically (legacy behavior), false will enable to open your workspace folder. See #1358 for details.

plugins

To be productive with IntelliJ you need plugins. Of course devonfw-ide can automate this for your: In your settings git repository create a folder intellij/plugins (click this link to see more examples and see which plugins come by default). Here you can create a properties file for each plugin. This is an example scala.properties:

plugin_id=org.intellij.scala
plugin_active=false

The variables are defined as following:

• plugin_id defines the unique ID of the plugin to install. If you want to customize devonfw-ide with new plugins use the search on https://plugins.jetbrains.com/idea_ce to find the plugin of your choice. Select the tab Versions and click on a version in the list. The plugin ID is displayed in the upper right corner. Copy & paste the ID from here to make up your own custom config.

• plugin_active is an optional parameter. If it is true (default) the plugin will be installed automatically during the project setup for all developers in your team. Otherwise developers can still install the plugin manually via devon intellij add-plugin «plugin_id».

In general you should try to stick with the configuration pre-defined by your project. But some plugins may be considered as personal flavor and are typically not predefined by the project config. Such plugins should be shipped with your settings as described above with plugin_active=false allowing you to easily install it manually. Surely, you can easily add plugins via the UI of IntelliJ. However, be aware that some plugins may collect sensitive data or could introduce other vulnerabilities. So consider the governance of your project and talk to your technical lead before installing additional plugins that are not pre-defined in your settings.

As maintainer of the settings for your project you should avoid to ship too many plugins that may waste resources but are not used by every developer. By configuring additional plugins with plugin_active=false you can give your developers the freedom to install some additional plugins easily.

All plugins are installed separately in plugins/intellij.