Incompatible Changes in IntelliJ Platform and Plugins API

IntelliJ API may be occasionally changed between releases, leading to existing plugins' incompatibilities with newer IDE builds.

Verifying Compatibility

Plugin Verifier

Compatibility with newer IDEs can easily be verified for plugins hosted on the JetBrains Plugins Repository using the built-in Plugin Verifier.

For local verification or non-public plugins, intellij-plugin-verifier can be used standalone as well.

Integration in Gradle build is available using the runPluginVerifier task, please see Gradle IntelliJ Plugin - Plugin Verifier DSL for details.

You can easily integrate it within your CI by running that task as another quality check step. Check the IntelliJ Platform Plugin Template GitHub workflow configuration file as sample.

If your plugin is hosted on GitHub and you are not using Gradle, consider using third-party GitHub Actions IntelliJ Platform Plugin Verifier or IntelliJ Plugin Verifier.

IDE Support

Consider using the following IDE inspections to get additional alerts about code that uses unstable API features:

JVM languages | Unstable API Usage
JVM languages | Unstable type is used in signature

Usage of deprecated or annotated with org.jetbrains.annotations.ApiStatus.@Experimental/ @Internal Extension Points is highlighted in plugin.xml files.

Known Breaking Changes

The following pages list the breaking changes in IDE and plugin releases with required/recommended steps to take by plugin authors.

Information about bundled Third-Party Software/Libraries and their respective versions is available here.

Last modified: 22 April 2021