IntelliJ IDEA

"IntelliJ" redirects here. For the company formerly named IntelliJ Software, see JetBrains.

IntelliJ IDEA is an integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for developing computer software written in Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and other JVM-based languages. It is developed by JetBrains (formerly known as IntelliJ) and is available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition,^[2] and in a proprietary commercial edition. Both can be used for commercial development.^[3][4]

IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1 Community Edition
Developer(s)	JetBrains
Initial release	1.0 / January 2001; 23 years ago (2001-01)
Stable release	2023.3.6^[1]  / 21 March 2024
Written in	Java, Kotlin
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux
Type	Java IDE
License	Community edition: Apache License 2.0 Ultimate edition: Trialware
Website	www.jetbrains.com/idea/

History

The first version of IntelliJ IDEA was released in January 2001 and was one of the first available Java IDEs with advanced code navigation and code refactoring capabilities integrated.^[5][6]

In 2009, JetBrains released the source code for IntelliJ IDEA under the open-source Apache License 2.0.^[7][8] JetBrains also began distributing a limited version of IntelliJ IDEA consisting of open-source features under the moniker Community Edition. The commercial Ultimate Edition provides additional features and remains available for a fee.

In a 2010 InfoWorld report, IntelliJ received the highest test center score out of the four top Java programming tools: Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans and JDeveloper.^[9]

In December 2014, Google announced version 1.0 of Android Studio, an open-source IDE for Android apps, based on the open source community edition.^[10] Other development environments based on IntelliJ's framework include AppCode, CLion, DataGrip, GoLand, PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rider, RubyMine, WebStorm, and MPS.^[11]

In September 2020, Huawei announced and released version 1.0 of DevEco Studio, an open-source IDE for HarmonyOS apps development, based on Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA with Huawei's SmartAssist for Windows and macOS.^[12]

System requirements

System requirements for IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3^[13]

	Windows	macOS	Linux
Operating system version	64-bit Windows 10, version 1809 (or Windows Server 2019) or later	macOS Big Sur or later	A Linux distribution with glibc 2.27 or later that supports GNOME, KDE, or Unity
RAM	2 GB RAM minimum; 8 GB RAM recommended
Disk space	3.5 GB required; a solid-state drive with at least 5 GB of free space is recommended
JDK version	JDK 7 to 21 supported^[14]
JRE version	Bundled with Java 17
Screen resolution	At least 1024×768 is required; at least 1920×1080 is recommended

Features

Coding assistance

The IDE provides certain features^[15] like code completion by analyzing the context, code navigation which allows jumping to a class or declaration in the code directly, code refactoring, code debugging^[16] , linting and options to fix inconsistencies via suggestions.

Built in tools and integration

The IDE provides^[15] integration with build/packaging tools like Grunt, bower, Gradle, and sbt. It supports databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and MySQL can be accessed directly from the IDE in the Ultimate edition, through an embedded version of DataGrip, another IDE developed by JetBrains.

Plugin ecosystem

IntelliJ supports plugins through which one can add additional functionality to the IDE. Plugins can be downloaded and installed either from IntelliJ's plugin repository website or through the IDE's inbuilt plugin search and install feature. Each edition has separate plugin repositories, with both the Community and Ultimate editions totaling over 3000 plugins each as of 2019.^[17]

Supported languages

The Community and Ultimate editions differ in their support for various programming languages as shown in the following table.^[18]

Supported in both Community and Ultimate Edition: CSS, Sass, SCSS, Less, Stylus Groovy HTML, XML, JSON, YAML Java Kotlin Markdown XSL, XPATH

Supported in both Community and Ultimate Edition via plugins: Clojure^[19] CloudSlang^[20] Dart Elm^[21] Erlang Gosu Haskell^[22] Haxe Julia^[23] Lua^[24] Perl Python^[25]^[26] R^[27] Rust^[28]^[29] Scala

Supported only in Ultimate Edition: CoffeeScript, ActionScript JavaScript, TypeScript SQL

Supported only in Ultimate Edition via plugins: Cython Go PHP Ruby and JRuby

Technologies and frameworks

Source:^[18]

Supported in both Community and Ultimate Edition: Android (includes the Android Studio's functionality) Ant Gradle Test runners (JUnit, TestNG, Spock, Cucumber, ScalaTest, spec2, etc.) JavaFX Maven

Supported only in Ultimate Edition: Django Thymeleaf, FreeMarker, Velocity Grails Jakarta EE (Jakarta Faces, JAX-RS, CDI, JPA, etc.) Micronaut, Quarkus, Helidon Node.js, React, Vue.js, Angular AspectJ, JBoss Seam, OSGi Play Ruby on Rails sbt^[30] Spring

There was a free plugin from Atlassian for IntelliJ available to integrate with JIRA,^[31] Bamboo, Crucible and FishEye. However, the software, called IDE-Connector, was discontinued on June 1, 2015.^[32]

Software versioning and revision control

The two editions also differ in their support^[18] for software versioning and revision control systems.

Supported in both Community and Ultimate Edition: Git Mercurial Subversion Azure DevOps (formerly TFS/VSTS; via plug-in)^[33]^[34]

Supported only in Ultimate Edition: Perforce

See also

•  Free and open-source software portal

• Comparison of integrated development environments
• GitHub Copilot

Bibliography

• Saunders, Stephen; Fields, Duane K.; Belayev, Eugene (March 1, 2006), IntelliJ IDEA in Action (1st ed.), Manning, p. 450, ISBN 1-932394-44-3
• Davydov, S.; Efimov, A. (May 2005), (1st ed.), BHV, p. 800, ISBN 5-94157-607-2, archived from the original on 2013-12-09, retrieved 2011-03-17

References

1. "IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3.6 Is Out!".
2. "JetBrains/intellij-community". GitHub. 6 December 2022.
3. . www.jetbrains.org. Archived from the original on 2020-01-23.
4. "Can I use Community Editions of JetBrains IDEs for developing commercial proprietary software?". JetBrains. Retrieved 29 June 2021.
5. . JetBrains. Archived from the original on 2014-01-22. Retrieved 2010-12-17.
6. Fowler, Martin. "Crossing Refactoring's Rubicon". MartinFowler.com.
7. "JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA Goes Open Source". The JetBrains Blog. 15 October 2009. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
8. Pronschinske, Mitch (15 October 2009). . dzone.com. Archived from the original on 2017-03-14. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
9. Binstock, Andrew (22 September 2010). "InfoWorld review: Top Java programming tools". InfoWorld.
10. "Google releases Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its IDE". VentureBeat. 8 December 2014.
11. "What is the IntelliJ Platform?". VentureBeat. 23 February 2015.
12. Amit (2020-09-09). "Huawei DevEco Studio 1.0 launched: EMUI 11 and Hongmeng Project App can be developed". HU. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
13. "Install IntelliJ IDEA – System requirements". www.jetbrains.com. 11 January 2024. Retrieved 7 February 2024.
14. "Supported Java versions and features". www.jetbrains.com. 7 October 2023. Retrieved 7 February 2024.
15. "IntelliJ IDEA :: Features". JetBrains. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
16. Roman Beskrovnyi, "Debugging in IntelliJ IDEA: a beginner's guide", CodeGym.cc blog, 16 March 2020
17. "JetBrains Plugins Repository". plugins.jetbrains.com. Retrieved 2019-07-14.
18. "IntelliJ IDEA Editions Comparison". JetBrains. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
19. "Cursive - Plugins - JetBrains". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
20. "CloudSlang - Plugins - JetBrains". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
21. "Elm - Plugins - JetBrains". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
22. van der Kleij, Rik. "Haskell - Plugins - JetBrains". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
23. "Julia - Plugins - JetBrains". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
24. . bitbucket.org. Archived from the original on 2016-10-11. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
25. "Python Community Edition - Plugins - JetBrains". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
26. "JetBrains Delights the Python Community with a Free Edition of its Famous IDE, PyCharm 3.0". jetbrains.com. 24 September 2013.
27. "R Language for IntelliJ". JetBrains Plugin Repository.
28. JetBrains. "Rust". JetBrains Plugins. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
29. Cheptsov, Andrey (4 August 2017). "Official Support for Open-Source Rust Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA, CLion, and Other JetBrains IDEs". JetBrains Blog. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
30. "Built-in SBT Support in IntelliJ IDEA 13". JetBrains. 18 November 2013.
31. . Atlassian. Archived from the original on 2011-10-18. Retrieved 2009-02-07.
32. "We are discontinuing the support for Atlassian IDE Connectors - Atlassian Developers". developer.atlassian.com. June 2015.
33. JetBrains. "TFS". JetBrains Plugins. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
34. Microsoft. "Azure DevOps". JetBrains Plugins. Retrieved 2019-12-10.

 

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