The OSS platform on which IntelliJ IDEA is based is used by a number of commercial as well as free IDEs, supporting a large number of programming languages and frameworks. And certainly Google's move to use it for their Android Studio increased its usage noticeably. So what kind of possibilities does it offer for plugin developers? What are the differences compared to Eclipse or NetBeans? What kind of extensions can be developed, is there tooling support and documentation available to guide me? After discussing these basic questions, we'll take a look at concrete samples: supporting new programming languages, frameworks, small utilities for daily routine tasks and much more. Maybe by now you already have an idea for your first plugin? And of course, IntelliJ Platform is open source itself, so we'll take a look how you can contribute to it. Or maybe you even want to start working on your own standalone IDE? You'll have the chance to take away a number of "Lessons Learned" as well as Best Practices from my own 10+ years of experience developing plugins for IntelliJ IDEA.

1. Developing on the IntelliJ Platform
Yann Cébron (JetBrains)
@yanncebron

2. IntelliJ Platform -
WAT??!

3. Available IDEs #1- JetBrains
IntelliJ IDEA
RubyMine
PyCharm
PhpStorm
WebStorm
• Community Edition
• Ultimate
• Edu

4. Available IDEs #2 - JetBrains
Meta Programming
System
DataGrip
AppCode
CLion

5. In the works
#C IDE
Early 2017

6. IDEs - Third Party

7. Upsource - IntelliJ goes Server

8. The whole ecosystem…
• 13 IDEs
• JVM, Web, Android, iOS, C/C++, Python, Go,
Database/SQL, Language DSL, #C/.NET, …
• ~ 1800 plugins plugins.jetbrains.com

9. IntelliJ Platform

10. IntelliJ Platform - Basics
• 2009
• Apache 2 License
• IDE/Developer Tooling
• NOT a Rich Client Platform (RCP)

11. IntelliJ Platform - From 10000 feet
• DI-Infrastructure (PicoContainer)
• VirtualFileSystem
• PSI (Program Structure Interface)
• Editor
• Action-System
• UI components (Swing)

12. So what can I build?
• Plugins
• Standalone-IDE
• Core (Upsource, Kotlin Compiler)

13. Plugins

14. Plugins - Typology
• Programming Languages
• Framework Support
• IDE-internal Tool
• Project/Company specific Tooling

15. Some interesting plugins
• BashSupport
• ANTLRv4
• XText
• Go
• DummyTextGenerator
• Erlang

16. Deployment

17. Compatibility
• JDK 8, JetBrains Runtime Environment
• Target IDE(s)
• IDE-Version
• API-compatibility & IntelliJ Api Watcher

18. Installing
• plugins.jetbrains.com
• Custom Plugin Server
• JAR/ZIP

19. Standalone IDEs

20. Standalone IDE
• Customizing
• Infrastructure
• Builds: DIY
• Reference: Android Studio

21. How? Where? What?

22. Support
• SDK Documentation „We take pull requests and RFEs“
www.jetbrains.org/intellij/sdk/docs
• Forum
• OSS Plugins
• „patch_welcome“
• IDEA Backlog

23. Tools
• GrammarKit
• PSIViewer
• -Didea.is.internal=true

24. Survival Strategies

25. 10+ Years of Plugin Development
• Struts 1 (2004)
• Struts 2 (2007)
• Project specific XML-Tooling
• Struts 2
• Spring-Framework
• Plugin DevKit
• TeamCityProtect (JetBrains internal)
• … Something Completely Different?

26. Lessons Learned
• Where? >> How?
• *Manager
• RTFS
• Forum
• Similar Plugins

27. Hector The Inspector
• WolfTheProblemSolver
• InjectedLanguageFormattingTest#
testFrankenstein2
• SymlinkHandlingTest#
testTransGenderRefresh
• Easter Eggs

28. Q&A
@yanncebron