IntelliJ

Almost all professional Java and Scala development teams use IntelliJ IDEA, an IDE (integrated development environment) for Java and other JVM languages. We also use IntelliJ in CS1332 and CS2340.

Get Started

Note: you may already have the Community Edition, perhaps because you took CS1332. In this course we use the Ultimate Edition, which is the Community Edition (the open source core of IntelliJ IDEA) plus additional features (e.g., Play! Framework support).

1. Get IntelliJ
   • As a student or faculty member, you can get all of JetBrains’s products free. The easiest way is to visit JetBrains’s student license page, click “APPLY NOW” and use your university email address. You’ll get an email within a few minutes with instructions on downloading the products in their “Product Pack for Students.”

2. Install the Scala plugin in IntelliJ (Preferences -> Plugins).

3. Learn IntelliJ

Add a Few Customizations

These are my personal modifications, which I find make IntelliJ more pleasant to use.

• Editor
  • General
    • Soft Wraps
      • Check “Use Soft Wraps in Editor”
    • Virtual Space
      • Uncheck all.
    • Other
      • Strip trailing spaces on exit - All
      • Uncheck “Always keep trailing spaces on caret line”
      • Check “Ensure line feed at end of file on save”
  • Smart Keys
    • Uncheck “Insert paired brackets (), [], <>”
    • Uncheck “Insert pair quote”
    • Check “Surround selection on typing quote or brace”
  • Code Style
    • Hard wrap at 80 columns
    • Visual guides: 80 columns
• Keymap (Note: these are macOS-specific.)
  • Main Menu
    • File
      • Open…: CTRL-CMD-O
  • Plugins
    • Terminal
      • Open in Terminal: CTRL-F12

Keyboard Shortcuts

The more you keep your fingers on the keyboard, the faster you’ll be. Here are some shortcuts that I commit to memory (many of these are explained in Discover IntelliJ IDEA.

Note: for many commands, especially “switching” commands, adding a SHIFT reverses the direction.

macOS

• File|Open: CTRL-CMD-O

  You can open any file or directory, so you can actually use IntelliJ as a general-purpose text editor. To open an IDEA project, open the project root directory (e.g., directory with a .idea subdirectory).

• Switch between open projects: CMD-` (Window

  Next Project Window)

• Goto/Toggle Project Pane: CMD-1
• Goto Editor: ESC
• Open in Terminal: CTRL-F12
• Goto/Toggle Terminal: OPT-F12
• Switch between open files or tool windows: CTRL-TAB
• Find Action: SHIFT-OPT-A (for when you don’t know a key-binding)

More to come …

And once you feel comfortable you can level-up with IntelliJ IDEA Pro Tips.

Playing Nicely with Emacs

Emacs’s keybindings are far different from modern applications, and many of these keybindings cause problems (e.g., M-w in Emacs copies the selection, but in macOS it closes the current window). I tried Intellij’s Emacs keymap and didn’t like it. It may be easier to simply modify Emacs’s keybindings to match Intellij’s. Here are some Emacs config files to give you a start:

• For IntelliJ’s Mac OS X 10.5+ keymap: intellij.el

More to come …

Miscellaneous Tips

• Add JetBrains’s .gitignore items to your .gitignore file.