In simple English
This repository holds the open source code for IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm. It lets developers build these popular programming environments from scratch. You can also use it to create custom plugins and your own desktop software tools. Building it requires a powerful computer with plenty of memory and disk space. Most solo builders should download the finished application instead of compiling this massive codebase.
What it is
It is the main source code repository for the IntelliJ Platform and community edition IDEs. It provides the UI components, editors, parsers, and build scripts needed to assemble a complete development environment.
What it is good for
Plugin developers and advanced engineers use this codebase to extend JetBrains tools or study how a modern integrated development environment works.
- Access to the exact source code used to build popular developer tools.
- Enables deep customisation and plugin creation for the platform.
- Active maintenance and frequent updates from a major software company.
- Extremely large codebase that takes a long time to clone and build.
- High memory and processor requirements for compilation.
- Complex setup process involving specialised build tools like Bazel.
building plugins without source access
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git clone https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community.git cd intellij-community ./getPlugins.sh