IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA
Company type	Software
Industry	Software development
Founded	January 2001; 25 years ago
Founder	JetBrains (previously known as IntelliJ)
Products	Integrated development environment (IDE) for Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and other JVM-based languages
Owner	JetBrains
Website	www.jetbrains.com/idea/

IntelliJ IDEA () is an integrated development environment (IDE) created by JetBrains (previously known as IntelliJ) for software development in Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and various other JVM-based languages. It provides a free Community Edition released under the Apache License 2.0 with some proprietary plugins, alongside a paid Ultimate Edition. Both versions facilitate commercial software creation.

History

IntelliJ IDEA debuted in January 2001 as one of the earliest Java IDEs featuring sophisticated code navigation and integrated code refactoring capabilities. In 2009, JetBrains made the Community Edition open source under the Apache License 2.0 while continuing to offer a feature-rich commercial Ultimate Edition.

By 2010, IntelliJ IDEA led performance benchmarks among prominent Java IDEs such as Eclipse, NetBeans, and JDeveloper. December 2014 saw Google introduce Android Studio 1.0, an open-source IDE for Android app development built upon IntelliJ's Community Edition. JetBrains also utilized the IntelliJ platform to create specialized IDEs including AppCode, CLion, DataGrip, GoLand, PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rider, RubyMine, and WebStorm.

In September 2020, Huawei released DevEco Studio 1.0, an open-source IDE designed for HarmonyOS app development based on IntelliJ IDEA, enhanced with Huawei's SmartAssist technology for Windows and macOS.

System requirements

System requirements for IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3
	Windows	macOS	Linux
Operating system version	64-bit Windows 10, version 1809 (or later including Windows Server 2019)	macOS Monterey or newer	Linux kernel 6.x with glibc 2.28+ supporting either GNOME or KDE
RAM	At least 2 GB of available RAM; 8 GB recommended
Disk space	Minimum of 3.5 GB required; SSD storage with at least 5 GB free preferred
JDK version	Compatible with JDK versions ranging from 7 to 21
JRE version	Includes bundled Java Runtime Environment version 17
Screen resolution	Minimum resolution of 1024×768 pixels; recommended resolution is 1920×1080 pixels

Coding assistance

IntelliJ IDEA provides sophisticated tools such as context-sensitive code completion, instant navigation to declarations or classes, code refactoring, debugging support, linting capabilities, and automated fixes for code issues.

Built-in tools and integration

The IDE seamlessly integrates with build systems including Maven, Grunt, Gradle, and sbt. The Ultimate edition additionally offers native database connectivity for Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and MySQL through an embedded variant of JetBrains' DataGrip.

Plugin ecosystem

Extensive plugin customization is supported within IntelliJ IDEA. Users can access plugins via the official repository or through the built-in search functionality. As of November 2024, the Community Edition includes over 7,600 plugins available, while the Ultimate Edition supports upwards of 8,300 plugins.

Supported Programming Languages

The range of programming languages supported varies between the Community and Ultimate editions as outlined below:

Languages available in both Community and Ultimate editions:

Languages accessible in both editions through plugins:

Languages exclusive to the Ultimate edition:

Ultimate edition languages available through plugins:

Cython
Go
PHP
Ruby and its variant, JRuby

Technologies and Framework Support

Technologies supported by both Community and Ultimate editions include:

Android (incorporating capabilities from Android Studio)
Ant
Gradle
Test execution frameworks such as (JUnit, TestNG, Spock, Cucumber, ScalaTest, spec2, among others)
JavaFX
Maven

Technologies supported solely by the Ultimate edition:

Web frameworks like Django
Template engines including Thymeleaf, FreeMarker, and Velocity
Frameworks such as Grails
Components of the Jakarta EE platform (Jakarta Faces, JAX-RS, Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI), Jakarta Persistence (JPA), etc.)
Modern frameworks like Micronaut, Quarkus, and Helidon
JavaScript platforms and libraries including Node.js, React, Vue.js, and the framework Angular
Aspect-oriented programming with tools like AspectJ, enterprise frameworks such as JBoss Seam, and modular systems like OSGi
Additional frameworks including the Play and Ruby on Rails
Build tools like sbt (sbt)
The comprehensive development framework, Spring (Spring)

Atlassian once offered a free plugin that integrated IntelliJ IDEA with JIRA, Bamboo, Crucible, and FishEye; however, this IDE-Connector was discontinued as of June 1, 2015.

Version Control and Software Revision Management

The support for version control systems varies by edition:

Supported in both Community and Ultimate editions:

Distributed version control with Git
Distributed version control via Mercurial
Centralized version control using Apache Subversion (Subversion)
Integration with Azure DevOps (Azure DevOps), formerly known as TFS/VSTS, through plugins

Exclusive to the Ultimate edition:

Support for the Perforce version control system (Perforce)

Bibliography

References