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Besides working from within IntelliJ IDEA, it is possible to perform certain actions "offline", without actually launching the IDE. This way you can:

Launching a code inspection from the command line

To launch a code inspection from the command line
  • Specify the following command line arguments:
    • Path to the launcher: specify the full path to one of the following launchers (which reside under the bin directory of your IntelliJ IDEA installation):
      • For Windows: inspect.bat
      • For UNIX and OS X: inspect.sh
    • Project file path is the full path to the directory that contains the project to be inspected.
    • Inspection profile path is the full path to the profile, against which the project should be inspected. The inspection profiles are stored under USER_HOME\.IntelliJ IDEAXX\config\inspection
    • Output path is the full path to an existing directory where the report will be stored.
    • Options. You can specify:
      • The directory to be inspected -d <full path to the subdirectory>
      • The verbosity level of output -vX, where X is 0 for quiet, 1 for noisy and 2 for extra noisy.

    Please note that you have to specify full paths. Relative paths are not accepted!

    If SDK is not defined, the inspection will fail. The SDK descriptions should be stored in config\options\jdk.table.xml. Learn how to configure SDK here.

Examples

Windows

C:\Program Files (x86)\JetBrains\<IntelliJ IDEA home>\bin\inspect.bat
E:\SampleProjects\MetersToInchesConverter E:\Work\MyProject\.idea\inspectionProfiles\Project_Default.xml
E:\Work\MyProject\inspection-results-dir -v2 -d E:\SampleProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\subdirectory

OS X

/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/bin/inspect.sh ~/IntelliJ IDEAProjects/MyTestProject
~/Library/Preferences/ideaXX/inspection/Default.xml ~/IntelliJ IDEAProjects/MyTestProject/results-dir -v2

Viewing differences

To view differences using command line diff tool
  • In the command line, type the following: 
    <IntelliJ IDEA> diff <path1> <path2>
    where:
    • <IntelliJ IDEA> is the platform-specific product launcher
    • <path1>, <path2> are full paths to the files to be compared.

Examples

Windows

IntelliJ IDEA.exe diff C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\src\javascript\numbers.js
C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\src\coffeescript\numbers.coffee

OS X

/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/MacOS/idea diff ~/Documents/file1.txt ~/Documents/file2.txt

Opening file in the editor

To open file for editing
  • In the command line, type the following: 
    <IntelliJ IDEA> <path1> --line<number> <path2>
    where:
    • <IntelliJ IDEA> is the platform-specific product launcher
    • <path1> is the path to the project that contains the desired file
    • <number> is the number of the line, where the caret should rest
    • <path2> is the path to the file to be opened

Examples

Windows

IntelliJ IDEA.exe C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter --line 3
C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\src\javascript\numbers.js

OS X

/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/MacOS/idea ~/IntelliJ IDEAProjects/untitled45 --line 1 ~/IntelliJ IDEAProjects/untitled45/sample.sass