MPS 2018.2 Help

Managing Plugins

Plugins are extensions to MPS core functionality. They provide the IDE integration with version control systems (VCS) and application servers, add support for various development technologies, frameworks and programming languages, and so on.

The more plugins are installed and enabled, the more features you have available. On the other hand, disabling unnecessary plugins may increase performance, especially on "less powerful" computers.

Certain plugins are independent, certain are not. Dependent plugins require other plugins to be enabled.

If necessary, you can add an installed plugin to the list of required plugins for the current project.

To enable/disable plugins

  1. Press N/A to open the Settings/Preferences dialog and then go to Plugins.
  2. In the right-hand part of the dialog, use checkboxes to enable or disable plugins.
  3. If the plugin of interest is not present in the list (which may be the case for a repository plugin), you can download and install the plugin.
  4. Restart MPS for the changes to take effect.

Categories of plugins

In relation to MPS, plugins may be attributed to one of the following categories:

  • Plugins bundled with the IDE. These plugins are installed and enabled by default. You can disable unnecessary bundled plugins, but you cannot uninstall them.
  • Repository plugins, that is, plugins stored in plugin repositories (e.g., the JetBrains Plugin Repository). To be able to use the repository plugins, you should download and install them.

Plugin repositories

MPS provides access to MPS Plugin Repository at Managing Plugins. You can also set up your own enterprise plugin repositories, for example, to store plugins that you want to reserve for your company's internal use only. (A plugin repository corresponds to one or more Web servers.)

To be able to use repository plugins, you have to download and install such plugins first. After that, you get the ability to update these plugins when appropriate.

When a repository plugin becomes unnecessary, you can disable or uninstall it.

To download and install a repository plugin

Note that the plugin you have installed is automatically enabled. When necessary, you can disable it as described above.

  1. Press N/A to open the Settings/Preferences dialog and then go to Plugins.
  2. Click the Install JetBrains plugin or the Browse repositories button.
  3. In the Browse Repositories dialog that opens, right-click the required plugin and select Download and Install.

    Note that when looking for the plugin of interest, you can filter the plugins list and perform a search.

  4. Confirm your intention to download and install the selected plugin.
  5. Click Close.
  6. Click OK in the Settings dialog and restart MPS for the changes to take effect.

To update a repository plugin

  1. Press N/A to open the Settings/Preferences dialog and then go to Plugins.
  2. Right-click any of the plugins and select Reload List of Plugins.

    The names of repository plugins that have newer versions available are shown blue.

  3. Right-click the necessary plugin and select Update Plugin.
  4. Click OK in the Settings dialog and restart MPS for the changes to take effect.

To uninstall a repository plugin

  1. Press N/A to open the Settings/Preferences dialog and then go to Plugins.
  2. Right-click the repository plugin to be uninstalled and select Uninstall.
  3. Confirm your intention to uninstall the selected plugin.
  4. Click OK in the Settings dialog and restart MPS for the changes to take effect.

To be able to use plugin repositories other than the JetBrains Plugin Repository (e.g., your enterprise plugin repositories), you should specify their URLs in MPS.

To add plugin repositories

  1. Press N/A to open the Settings/Preferences dialog and then go to Plugins.
  2. Click Browse repositories.
  3. In the Browse Repositories dialog, click Manage repositories.
  4. In the Custom Plugin Repositories dialog, click icons general add svg and specify the repository URL. Click Check Now to make sure that the URL is correct.

Alternatively, you can add the repositories by editing the MPS custom .properties, or custom .vmoptions file:

To replace JetBrains repositories with your own ones

  1. Open the MPS custom .properties, or custom .vmoptions file for editing: Help | Edit Custom Properties or Help | Edit Custom VM Options.
  2. Depending on the file, add the following line:
    • idea.plugins.host=<yourRepositoryURL> for the .properties file.
    • -Didea.plugins.host=<yourRepositoryURL> for the .vmoptions file.
    You can actually add any number of custom repositories. Depending on the file, add the following line:
    • idea.plugin.hosts=<URL1>;<URL2>;...<URLn> for the .properies file.
    • -Didea.plugin.hosts=<URL1>;<URL2>;...<URLn> for the .vmoptions file.
  3. Make sure that there is no option that points to http://plugins.jetbrains.com or https://plugins.jetbrains.com.
  4. Restart MPS. As a result, the specified repository becomes your main plugin repository. You can now add repositories as described in Adding repositories.

To be available to MPS users, all enterprise repository plugins must be listed in the file updatePlugins.xml along with their URLs and version numbers. This file must be available at the URL specified for the corresponding repository.

The plugins themselves are identified by their individual URLs and thus may be located on different Web servers.

To add a plugin to an enterprise plugin repository

  1. Upload your plugin JAR onto a Web server.
  2. Add the plugin definition to updatePlugins.xml. If this file doesn't yet exist, create it at the location corresponding to the repository URL.

    The plugin definition in updatePlugins.xml may look similar to this:

    <plugins> ... <plugin id="MyPlugin" url="http://plugins.example.com:8080/myPlugin.jar" version="1.0"/> ... </plugins>
  3. To publish a new version of the same plugin, upload the corresponding plugin JAR to the repository, and change the value of the version attribute in the plugin definition.

The file updatePlugins.xml must correspond to the following Document Type Definition (DTD):

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

Installing plugins from disk

If you have a plugin file available on your computer, you can install it from disk. A plugin file is an archive file (ZIP or a JAR) and you do not need to decompress it before installation.

To install a plugin from disk

  1. Press N/A to open the Settings/Preferences dialog and then go to Plugins.
  2. In the right-hand part, on the Plugins page, click Install plugin from disk.
  3. In the dialog that opens, select the plugin archive file, and click OK.
  4. In the Settings / Preferences dialog, click Apply or OK.
  5. If suggested, restart MPS.
Last modified: 13 August 2018
Regular Expression Syntax Reference