Introduction to Plugin Development
IntelliJ Platform plugins can be developed by using IntelliJ IDEA with the Plugin DevKit plugin installed. It is highly recommended to always use the latest available version of the IDE and Plugin DevKit, as the plugin development tooling is constantly improved.
Before starting with the actual development, make sure to understand all requirements to achieve best Plugin User Experience (UX).
Gradle Build System
The recommended solution for building IntelliJ Platform plugins is using the Gradle build system with a dedicated Gradle plugin: IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin.
The IntelliJ IDEA provides the necessary plugins to support Gradle-based plugin development: Gradle and Plugin DevKit. To verify these plugins are installed and enabled, see the Install plugins help section.
IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin
IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin manages the dependencies of a plugin project – both the base IDE and other plugin dependencies. It provides tasks to run the IDE with the plugin and to package and publish it to the JetBrains Marketplace. It allows verifying that the plugin is not affected by API changes and is backward compatible.
Alternatives to Gradle
The old DevKit project model and workflow are still supported in existing projects and are recommended for creating theme plugins. See how to migrate a DevKit plugin to Gradle.
A dedicated SBT plugin is available for plugins implemented in Scala.