Contributing to Flutter Plugin for IntelliJ

Contributing to Flutter Plugin for IntelliJ

Contributing code

We gladly accept contributions via GitHub pull requests! If you are new to codiing IntelliJ plugins, here are a couple links to get started:

INTRODUCTION TO CREATING INTELLIJ IDEA PLUGINS
ADVANCED GUIDE TO CREATING INTELLIJ IDEA PLUGINS

You must complete the Contributor License Agreement before any of your contributions with code get merged into the repo. If you've never submitted code before, you must add your (or your organization's) name and contact info to the AUTHORS file.

Getting started

Install Flutter SDK from Flutter SDK download or GitHub and set it up according to its instructions.
Verify installation from the command line:
- Connect an android device with USB debugging.
- cd path/to/flutter/examples/hello_world
- flutter pub get
- flutter doctor
- flutter run
Fork https://github.com/flutter/flutter-intellij into your own GitHub account. If you already have a fork, and are now installing a development environment on a new machine, make sure you've updated your fork with the master branch so that you don't use stale configuration options from long ago.
git clone -c core.symlinks=true https://github.com/<your_name_here>/flutter-intellij
cd flutter-intellij
git remote add upstream https://github.com/flutter/flutter-intellij The name upstream can be whatever you want.

Environment set-up

Install the lastest Java Development Kit.
- The current Java Development Kit version is: 23.
- [Googlers only] Install Java from go/softwarecenter instead.
Set your JAVA_HOME directory in the configuration file for your shell environment.
- For example, on macOS, the following works: Check what version of java you have:
```
/usr/libexec/java_home -V
```
  This should print out a Java version such as:
```
Matching Java Virtual Machines (1):
23.0.2 (arm64) "Azul Systems, Inc." - "Zulu 23.32.11" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/zulu-23.jdk/Contents/Home
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/zulu-23.jdk/Contents/Home
```
  In your shell configuration file (e.g. .bashrc or .zshrc), set your JAVA_HOME env variable to match that version.
```
export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 23.0.2
```
Set your FLUTTER_SDK path in the configuration file for your shell environment.
- For example, on macOS, the following works: Check where your Flutter SDK is installed:
```
which flutter
```
  This should print out a path to the Flutter SDK such as:
```
home/path/to/flutter/bin/flutter
```
  In your shell configuration file (e.g. .bashrc or .zshrc), set your FLUTTER_SDK env variable to match the path.
```
export FLUTTER_SDK="$HOME/path/to/flutter"
```
Set your DARK_SDK path in the configuration file for your shell environment.
- In your shell configuration file (e.g. .bashrc or .zshrc), set your DART_SDK env variable to match the Dart SDK in your Flutter SDK. This should look like the FLUTTER_SDK path (added above) with /bin/cache/dart-sdk appened to the end.
```
export DART_SDK="$HOME/path/to/flutter/bin/cache/dart-sdk`"
```
Add DART_SDK, FLUTTER_SDK and JAVA_HOME to your PATH.
- In your shell configuration file (e.g. .bashrc or .zshrc), below where your JAVA_HOME, FLUTTER_SDK, DART_SDK env variables were set, add the following line:
```
export PATH=$DART_SDK/bin:$FLUTTER_SDK/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"
```
Update your current PATH.
- Either re-start your terminal or run source ~/.zshrc / source ~/.bashrc to add the new environment variables to your PATH.

IntelliJ set-up

Make sure you're using the latest stable release of IntelliJ, or download and install the latest version of IntelliJ (2023.1 or later).
- IntelliJ Downloads
- Either the community edition (free) or Ultimate will work.

Create a gradle.properties file.

In the root directory, create an empty gradle.properties file (touch gradle.properties)
Add the following to the file:

 name = "flutter-intellij
 buildSpec=2024.3
 flutterPluginVersion=1
 ideaProduct=android-studio
 ideaVersion=2024.3.1.7
 baseVersion=243.22562.59
 dartPluginVersion= 243.21565.120
 androidPluginVersion=
 sinceBuild=243
 untilBuild=253.*
 testing=true
 kotlin.stdlib.default.dependency=false
 org.gradle.parallel=true
 org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xms1024m -Xmx4048m`

[Note] If you want, you can manually change these properties to target different versions of IntelliJ. See product-matrix.json to find which configurations are supported.

Start the IntelliJ IDEA with the flutter-intellij project.
- If you see a popup with "Gradle build scripts found", confirm loading the Gradle project, and wait until syncing is done.
  - If you didn't see the popup at the first start, delete & re-clone the repo and try again.
- Install DevKit plugin when prompted (this is required for later steps)
- Ignore suggestion for protobuf-java plugin, unless you want it.
Prepare other dependencies from the command line:
- cd path/to/flutter-intellij
- dart pub get
- (cd tool/plugin; dart pub get)
- bin/plugin test

Configure "Project Structure" settings

From IntelliJ, Open the "Project Structure" dialog (File | Project Structure).
Add the IntelliJ JBR from disk:
- Select "Platform Settings > SDKs"
- Click the "+" sign at the top "Add New SDK (Alt+Insert)", then select "Add JDK from disk...".
- Select your IntelliJ application (most likely under Applications) and from there, select the Contents/jbr/Contents/Home directory
- [For macos] You won't be able to select the Contents directory from Finder without right-clicking on the IntelliJ application, and selecting "Quick Look" from the dropdown that opens. From there, you can select the Contents directory.
- Change the name so that you can easily identify it, e.g. IDEA JBR 21.
- When you are done, your settings should look something like:
```
Name: IDEA JBR 21
JDK home path: /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA CE.app/Contents/jbr/Contents/Home
```
Add the IntelliJ Platform Plugin SDK
- Select "Platform Settings > SDKs"
- Click the "+" sign at the top "Add New SDK (Alt+Insert)", then select "Add IntelliJ Platform Plugin SDK...".
- [Note] If you don't see this option, ensure you have the DevKit plugin installed.
- Select your IntelliJ application (most likely under Applications) and from there, select the Contents directory
- [For macos] You won't be able to select the Contents directory from Finder without right-clicking on the IntelliJ application, and selecting "Quick Look" from the dropdown that opens.
- Remember the generated name (probably IntelliJ IDEA IU-231.8109.175) or change to name to format like this.
- Change the Internal Java Platform to the JBR you added in step 2. (e.g. IDEA JBR 21).
- When you are done, your settings should look something like:
```
Name: IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition IC-243.23654.189
IntelliJ Platform Plugin SDK home path: /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA CE.app/Contents
Internal Java Platform: IDEA JBR 21
```
Set the SDK for the Project
- Select "Project Settings > Project"
- Change the "SDK" selection to the IntelliJ Platform Plugin SDK you added in step 3.
- When you are done, your settings should look something like:
```
SDK: IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition IC-243.23654.189
```
Configure the modules for the Project
- Select "Project Settings > Modules"
- Select the flutter-intellij > flutter-idea module
- Switch to the "Paths" window
- Select the Inherit project compile output path option then apply.
Change the modules SDK to the Project SDK
- Select "Project Settings > Modules"
- Select all the sub-directories under the flutter-intellij > flutter-idea module
- Switch to the "Dependencies" window
- Change the "Module SDK" selection to Project SDK.

Configure the Gradle settings

From IntelliJ, Open the "Settings" dialog (IntelliJ IDEA | Settings).
Change the Gradle JVM to the Project SDK
- Select "Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Gradle"
- Change "Gradle JVM" selection to "Project SDK".
- When you are done, your settings should look something like:
```
Gradle JVM: Project SDK IDEA JBR 21 
```
Configure the Java compiler
- Select "Build, Execution, Deployment > Compiler > Java Compiler"
- Change the "Project bytecode version" to the major version of your Java version.
- For example, if your Java version is 23.0.2 , set it to 23.
- When you are done, your settings should look something like:
```
Project bytecode version: 23
```
Configure the Kotlin compiler
- Select "Build, Execution, Deployment > Compiler > Java Compiler"
- Change the "Target JVM version" to the same version as the Java compiler (step 3).
- When you are done, your settings should look something like:
```
Target JVM version: 23
```

Build and run the plugin

One-time Dart plugin install - first-time a new IDE is installed and run you will need to install the Dart plugin.
- Find Plugins (in "File | Settings | Plugins") and install the Dart plugin, then restart the IDE if needed.
[Optional] Add a key for JX Browser (see Working with Embedded DevTools (JxBrowser) below)
- [Note] This is only required if you are making changes to the embedded views.
Build the project using Build | Build Project.
Try running the plugin; select the flutter-intellij [runIde] run config then click the Debug icon. This should open the "runtime workbench", a new instance of IntelliJ IDEA with the plugin installed.
If the Flutter Plugin doesn't load (Dart code or files are unknown) see above "One-time Dart plugin install".
Verify installation of the Flutter plugin:
- Select flutter-intellij [runIde] in the Run Configuration drop-down list.
- Click Debug button (to the right of that drop-down).
- In the new IntelliJ process that spawns, open the path/to/flutter/examples/hello_world project.
- Choose Edit Configurations... in the Run Configuration drop-down list.
- Expand Edit configuration templates... and verify that Flutter is present.
- Click [+] and verify that Flutter is present.

Handle symlinks

If exceptions like these occurred:

A problem occurred configuring project ':flutter-idea'.
> Source directory 'X:\path\to\your\flutter-intellij\flutter-idea\resources' is not a directory.

Check out if the directory is a symlink by open the link in IDEA, and it'll display as:

../resources

Delete the file, then re-clone the repo using the below command:

git clone -c core.symlinks=true https://github.com/<your_name_here>/flutter-intellij

NOTE: Avoid symlinks addition during development as possible as you can, since they can lead to various of file-based issues during the development.

Provision Tool

This is not currently required. However, for debugging unit tests it may be handy; please ignore for now.

The Gradle build script currently assumes that some dependencies are present in the artifacts directory. This project uses an External Tool in IntelliJ to ensure the dependencies are present. It appears that external tools are not shareable. To make one, open the "Run Configuration" dialog and select "Flutter Plugin". Look at the "Before launch" panel. It probably displays an Unknown External Tool. Double-click that, then click edit icon in the new panel (pencil). Set the name to "Provision". Set the values:

Program: /bin/bash
Arguments: bin/plugin test -s
Working directory: $ProjectFileDir$
- You can select that from a list by clicking the "+" symbol in the field

There is a screenshot of this dialog in resources/intellij/Provision.png.

Save, close, and re-open the "Run Configuration" dialog. Confirm that the External Tool is named "Provision".

If you know where the Application Support files are located for your version of IntelliJ, you can drop the definition into its tools directory before starting IntelliJ. The definition is in resources/intellij/External Tools.xml.

Running plugin tests

Using test run configurations in IntelliJ

[Note: this may be out-of-date. It has not been verified recently.]

The repository contains two pre-defined test run configurations. One is for "unit" tests; that is currently defined as tests that do not rely on the IntelliJ UI APIs. The other is for "integration" tests - tests that do use the IntelliJ UI APIs. The integration tests are larger, long-running tests that exercise app use cases.

In order to be able to debug a single test class or test method you need to do the following:

Open the test source file in the editor. Navigate to flutter-idea/testSrc/unit/... to open it.
Tests must run using Gradle, so be sure to open the source from the Gradle module.
Find the test you want to run. Right-click the green triangle next to the test name and choose Debug <test-name>.

The test configuration can be tricky due to IntelliJ platform versioning. The plugin tool (below) can be a more reliable way to run tests.

Using the plugin tool on the command line

To run unit tests on the command line:

bin/plugin test

See TestCommand in tool/plugin/lib/plugin.dart for more options.

It is also possible to run tests directly with Gradle, which would allow passing more command-line arguments:

./gradlew test

If you wanted to run a subset of the tests you could do so this way. See the Gradle docs for more info about testing. However, you must have run the tests once using the plugin tool, to ensure all the dependencies have been configured.

Adding platform sources

Sometimes browsing the source code of IntelliJ is helpful for understanding platform details that aren't documented.

In order to have the platform sources handy, clone the IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition repo (git clone https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community)
Sync it to the same version of IntelliJ as given by baseVersion in gradle.properties (git checkout 211.7628). It will be in "detached HEAD" mode.
Open the Project Structure dialog (File > Project Structure). In the IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition sdk, head over to the Sourcepaths tab and add the path to intellij-community. Accept all the root folders found by the IDE after scanning.
Do the same for the intellij-plugins repo to get Dart plugin sources. Sync to the same version as before.

Working with Android Studio

Android Studio cannot use the Gradle-based project definition, so it still needs the flutter-intellij-community.iml file. Obviously, unit tests can only be run from the command line.

Initialize Android Studio sources.
Checkout Flutter plugin sources, tip of tree.
Follow the directions for setting up the Dart plugin sources in intellij-plugins/Dart/README.md with these changes:
- you do not need to clone the intellij-community repo
- open studio-main/tools/adt/idea in IntelliJ
- possibly skip running intellij-community/getPlugins.sh
Checkout Dart plugin sources.
Using the Project Structure editor, import
- intellij-plugins/Dart/Dart-community.iml (if there are lots of errors, see step 7)
- flutter-intellij/flutter-intellij-community.iml
Using the Project Structure editor, expand the tree to show intellij > android > adt > ui. Select the ui module then add a module dependency from it to flutter-intellij-community. Also add a dependency on the Dart module unless using step 7.
(Optional, when Dart sources are not usable.) Make sure the flutter-intellij-community module has a dependency on a library named Dart. It should be pre-defined, but if it is out-of-date then adjust it to point to flutter-intellij/third_party/lib/dart-plugin/xxx.yyyy/Dart.jar. Delete the Dart module from the Project Structure modules list.

Working with Embedded DevTools (JxBrowser)

We use JxBrowser, a commercial product, to embed DevTools within IntelliJ. A license key is required to use this feature in development, but it is not required for developing unrelated (most) features.

Getting a key to develop JxBrowser features:

Internal contributors: Ask another internal contributor to give you access to the key.
External contributors: Our license key cannot be transferred externally, but you can acquire your own trial or regular license from TeamDev to use here.

To set up the license key:

Copy the template at resources/jxbrowser/jxbrowser.properties.template and save it as resources/jxbrowser/jxbrowser.properties.
Replace <KEY> with the actual key.

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Files

CONTRIBUTING.md

CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Flutter Plugin for IntelliJ

Contributing code

Getting started

Environment set-up

IntelliJ set-up

Configure "Project Structure" settings

Configure the Gradle settings

Build and run the plugin

Handle symlinks

Provision Tool

Running plugin tests

Using test run configurations in IntelliJ

Using the plugin tool on the command line

Adding platform sources

Working with Android Studio

Working with Embedded DevTools (JxBrowser)

Files

CONTRIBUTING.md

Latest commit

History

CONTRIBUTING.md

File metadata and controls

Contributing to Flutter Plugin for IntelliJ

Contributing code

Getting started

Environment set-up

IntelliJ set-up

Configure "Project Structure" settings

Configure the Gradle settings

Build and run the plugin

Handle symlinks

Provision Tool

Running plugin tests

Using test run configurations in IntelliJ

Using the plugin tool on the command line

Adding platform sources

Working with Android Studio

Working with Embedded DevTools (JxBrowser)