Plugins

Types of plugins

IntelliJ IDEA distinguishes between the following three types of plugins:

• Plugins bundled with IntelliJ IDEA. These plugins are installed and enabled by default.
• Plugins available from the IntelliJ IDEA Repository. These plugins need installation and enabling.
• Custom plugins available from enterprise repositories. These plugins also need installation and enabling.

The set of installed and enabled plugins determines the set of supported features, module types, VCS integrations, application servers, and development technologies. Once added, plugins appear in the product UI after IntelliJ IDEA restart.

Plugin repositories

JetBrains Plugins Repository resides at http://plugins.intellij.net/ and stores numerous plugins, created by the community members. You can use the Plugin Manager, represented by the Plugins dialog, to download, install, update, and remove plugins.

For custom plugins you want to preserve for internal use only, IntelliJ IDEA helps maintain your own enterprise repositories.

The DTD of such file is:

<!DOCTYPE plugins [
    <!ELEMENT plugins(plugin)*>
    <!ELEMENT plugin (#PCDATA)>
    <!ATTLIST plugin
    id CDATA #REQUIRED url DATA #REQUIRED version CDATA #REQUIRED>]>
        

Refer to the sections Adding Plugins to Enterprise Repository and COnfiguring Plugins for details.

Plugin development

IntelliJ IDEA provides an open API that enables you to extend the IntelliJ IDEA functionality: add new intention actions, inspections, refactorings; integrate with version control systems, and more.

For plugin development, IntelliJ IDEA provides dedicated SDK, module and Run/Debug configuration types.

To learn more about plugin development, refer to:

• Plugin Development Guidelines.
• http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/plugins/plugin_developers.html.

PSI Viewer helps view the internal structure of your code as it is interpreted by IntelliJ IDEA.