In this package, you will find:

The author biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 1 "Get to Know Your IDE, Fast"
A synopsis of the books content
More information on IntelliJ IDEA Essentials

About the Author

Jarosaw Krochmalski is a passionate software designer and developer who specializes
in the financial business domain. He has over 12 years of experience in software
development. He is a clean-code and software craftsmanship enthusiast. He is a Certified
ScrumMaster and a fan of Agile. His professional interests include new technologies in
web application development, design patterns, enterprise architecture, and integration
patterns. He likes to experiment with NoSQL and cloud computing.
Jarosaw has been working with IDEA since its first release and has observed the IDE
grow and mature. He has been designing and developing software professionally since
2000 and has been using Java as his primary programming language since 2002. In the
past, he worked for companies such as Kredyt Bank (KBC) and Bank BPS on many
large-scale projects such as international money orders, express payments, and collection
systems. He currently works as a consultant for the Danish company 7N and writes
software for the Nykredit bank. You can reach him via Twitter at @jkroch or by
e-mail at [email protected].

I would like to thank my wife, Marylka, and my two boys, Wojtu and
Mati, for being patient and letting me finish the book. Without their help
and understanding, this book would not have been possible.
I would like to thank all the people at Packt Publishing, especially
Govindan K, Aman Preet Singh, Ellen Bishop, Richard Gall, and Sam
Woodyou've made the entire writing and publishing process very smooth
and straightforward. A special thanks to all the technical reviewers and
proofreaders for providing me with valuable feedback from which I have
learned a lot. Thank you.
Greetings to my friends at 7N, Nykredit, Kredyt Bank, and Bank BPSI
hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

IntelliJ IDEA Essentials

The first version of IntelliJ IDEA was released in January 2001. It is a mature, integrated
development environment (IDE), designed to help you in the coding process, and
supports a large number of different frameworks, tools, and targets. It works with
multiple programming languages. It now includes full support for Java 8 and Java EE 7.
The key objective of IntelliJ IDEA is to increase and assist developer productivity.
Whether you develop in Java, Scala, or PHP, or make the frontend using HTML and
JavaScript, IntelliJ IDEA's smart and relevant suggestions and code completion, on-thefly code analysis, and respectable refactoring tools will support you in every step.
When you are migrating from NetBeans or Eclipse, you will quickly see that IntelliJ
IDEA is different because it understands the context. The IDE knows where you are in
the editor and reacts accordingly; you will be surprised at how smart IntelliJ
IDEA behaves.
This tool is a generic workhorse rather than a strict Java IDE. In this book, you will learn
how to make IntelliJ IDEA work for you and get your job done in the most efficient and
pleasant way.

What This Book Covers

Although the book describes the latest version of IntelliJ IDEA - 14, most of the concepts
will also work on the previous revision of the IDE.
Chapter 1, Get to Know Your IDE, Fast, is a very concise note on editions comparison,
requirements and installing IntelliJ IDEA in Windows, OSX, and Linux. This chapter
guides you through the main workspace and show you ways to customize it for different
tasks, presenting briefly the most useful plugins, IDE settings, and configuration tips.
Chapter 2, Off We GoTo the Code, describes the process of setting up a new project or
importing an existing one. The chapter explains terminology differences with NetBeans
and Eclipse and presents the concept of modules and artifacts.
Chapter 3, The Editor, describes the core of IntelliJ IDEAthe editor. In this chapter,
you use state-of-the-art code completion, templates, and other great IntelliJ IDEA
features. This chapter shows how to set up the editor and gives you some
productivity tips.
Chapter 4, Make It BetterRefactoring, presents the powerful refactoring toolset of
IntelliJ IDEA. You are guided through the most useful refactoring techniques.
Chapter 5, Make It HappenRunning Your Project, covers configuring the runtime
environment for your project. We also talk about adding run configurations, either on the

server or standalone. This chapter focusses not only on Java, but on other technologies
such as Node.js as well.
Chapter 6, Building Your Project, focusses on building a project. You use IntelliJ IDEA's
own build system, and Maven and Gradle integration as well.
Chapter 7, Red or Green? Test Your Code, is all about unit testing in IntelliJ IDEA. We
focus on setting IntelliJ IDEA up specifically to run tests. You create JUnit and TestNG
run configurations and then run and debug the tests. Then, you are given a brief overview
of the test runner windows, useful settings, and option suggestions.
Chapter 8, Squash'em The Debugger, focusses on the IntelliJ IDEA debugger. You get
familiar with the debugger tool window and debugger options. We look under the hood
evaluating expressions, using watches, conditional breakpoints, and other debugger
features. We also talk briefly about remote debugging.
Chapter 9, Working with Your Team, This chapter is all about version control, and
managing change lists and tasks. There is a brief description on how to set up VCS
integration, with the main focus on Git. This chapter describes integration with popular
bug trackers, such as JIRA and YouTRACK.
Chapter 10, Not Enough? Extend It, describes briefly the plugin architecture of IntelliJ
IDEA. We talk about possibilities and develop a simple plugin, so that you have
knowledge of how to extend the IDE. You are also presented with useful links and
resources to develop your knowledge even further..

Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

In this chapter, we will compare IntelliJ IDEA editions and licenses, install the tool,
and quickly introduce the main workspace. IntelliJ IDEA comes with many settings;
it is not possible to cover all of them in one book so we will focus on the most
important ones. We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

Comparing the various editions

Installing the tool

Workspace overview

IDE settings

Configuration tips and tricks

Comparing the various editions

IntelliJ IDEA is available as a free Community Edition and full-fledged Ultimate
Edition. From the licensing point of view, the good thing is you can use both
editions to develop the software you want to sell. It is worth mentioning that
the new Android Studio that is used for the development of mobile Android
applications is also based on IntelliJ IDEA.
The detailed comparison table can be found on the JetBrains website: http://www.
jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html. To cut a

long story short, there are many features missing in the Community Edition, but
there are some workarounds available if you look close enough. For example, when
you want to use Tomcat or Jetty servers in the Community Edition, you can use
Maven plugins to run and debug your web applications freely. We will discuss
this in Chapter 5, Make It Happen Running Your Project.

Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

You can use the Community Edition to develop applications using many
frameworks such as Play, Struts, or Spring. It's all Java, after all. The IDE will not
assist you in that. Most of the configuration hints, warnings, autocompletion, and
runtime configuration features will be unavailable.
The Ultimate Edition, on the other hand, is the full-featured commercial IDE. You
have the full support of almost all of the modern frameworks and application
servers. The IDE will assist you by providing code completion, hints, and diagrams.
The language support in this edition is also more comprehensive; you will get HTML
and scripting languages analysis available on the fly, for example.
Apart from the provided features, the Ultimate Edition can be categorized
based on the license. Depending on your needs, you can purchase any of the
following licenses:

Commercial license: IntelliJ IDEA can be used by any developer in your

company but the total number of concurrent users cannot exceed the
number of purchased licenses.

Personal license: IntelliJ IDEA can be used only by the person who
purchased it. You can use it on as many computers as you own, as long as
you are the only user. The Personal license, of course, can also be used to
develop commercial products.

Additionally, there are some licensing options and discounts based on the target
audience, for startups, students, and teachers, for education or training, and finally,
for open source projects.
When you decide to buy the Ultimate Edition, sometimes it is wise
to wait till the holidays, for example, Christmas or Easter. The
JetBrains team usually provides some discounts on their products
then.

Installing IntelliJ IDEA

Installing IntelliJ IDEA is straightforward. Perform the following steps:
1. Go to http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/.
2. Pick the OS version and edition of your choice.

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Chapter 1

3. After opening the downloaded installation package in MS Windows,

you should see the installation wizard. In Mac OS, double-click on
the downloaded .dmg file and then just drag IntelliJ IDEA to the
Applications folder.
When you install IntelliJ IDEA over an existing installation, the
installation wizard will ask if you want to import settings from the
previous set up. Don't worry, your settings will be preserved.

During the first startup, IntelliJ IDEA will ask you which plugins should be enabled
by default. Usually, it's best to enable only what you need, so the IDE loads and
works faster with fewer plugins enabled. Don't worry if you don't know what to
select; you can always change your mind later by editing the IDE settings. On the
first startup, you will not be able to see the workspace without the project opened.
While we will go through the details of creating the project in the next chapter, you
can now just create the basic Java project by choosing New Project
from the File menu, selecting Java, and proceeding with the New Project wizard
by clicking on Next a couple of times.

An overview of the workspace

Basically, the workspace in IntelliJ IDEA consists of the main editor with tabs,
menus, and many tool windows.

Tool windows
The tool windows are hidden, by default, in Version 13 and later of IDEA. You
can toggle them on and off using the button in the bottom-left corner of the screen:

[9]

Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

Tool windows are those little "tabs" visible at the edges of the workspace.
These edges are called tool window bars, as shown in the following screenshot:

Some of the tool windows are always available, such as Project or Structure, while
some of them are available only when the corresponding plugins are enabled.
You can arrange the order of the tool windows by dragging them with your mouse.
You can drag the tool window to other screen edges as well.
There's a fourth tool window bar available at the top of the screen,
which is hidden. Just drag any tool window to the top of your
workspace to use it, as shown in the following screenshot:

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Chapter 1

View modes in tool windows

The tool windows have a context menu available when you right-click on them.
The context menu contains items specific to a particular tool window and some
possible view modes, as shown in the following screenshot:

Pinned Mode
The pinned tool window will stay open even when it becomes inactive by losing
focus. You may prefer to have the Project tool window pinned to have a constant
overview of the project structure. Only docked windows can be pinned. On the
other hand, you can keep the project view closed almost all the time and simply
use the keyboard shortcuts to navigate. On large projects, this approach is much
faster than searching the tree manually for your file.

Docked Mode
When docked, the tool window will share the total workspace area with other
workspace elements such as the editor. On the other hand, when undocked, the
tool window will overlap the other workspace elements when resized. An undocked
window will go away if inactive. For example, it is especially useful to have the
console tool window undocked and resized; reading huge logfiles or console output
will be a lot easier.

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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

Floating Mode
Floating, as the name suggests, allows the tool window to float over the workspace
and be detached from the screen edges. It may be useful when you work on
multimonitor environments with huge display resolutions set. There are no limiting
factors for the number of floating windows shown simultaneously. When floating,
tool windows can be easily arranged to suit your needs.

Split Mode
The tool window will share the tool window bar with other tool windows when it
has Split Mode enabled. This gives you the ability to see two tool windows at once.
It's nice to see the project structure and file structure at the same time, as shown
in the following screenshot:

When you use the Ctrl + left-click (PC) or cmd + left-click (Mac) keyboard shortcuts,
the splitter between the two tool windows is displayed at once; IntelliJ IDEA will
switch them to the wide screen mode and display them in a horizontal layout. It is
priceless when you work on a fancy panoramic display and would like to use the
screen space effectively, as shown in the following screenshot:

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Chapter 1

You can quickly go to the specific tool window by using the

mnemonic shortcut displayed before its name, for example, Alt + 1
(PC) or cmd + 1 (MAC) will take you to the Project tool window. It
works for hidden tool windows, too.

Multiple views in tool windows

Some tool windows have more than one view available. For example, the
Project tool window can show Project, Packages, or Problems, as shown in
the following screenshot:

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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

These views can be made visible as separate tabs by selecting Show views as tabs in
the tool window context menu:

When you have your tool windows set up, it may be a good idea to back up your
current layout. You can save the way the tool windows are currently arranged by
navigating to Window | Store Current Layout as Default in the main menu. You
can always load the saved workspace layout by navigating to Window | Restore
Default Layout or pressing Shift + F12.
You can quickly open your last active tool window by using the F12 (PC) or Fn +
F12 (Mac) keyboard shortcut. To make this shortcut work on Mac, you first need to
adjust the F12 system shortcut behavior in the System Preferences window available
in the Apple menu. To quickly hide/unhide all tool windows and focus on the
editor, press Ctrl + Shift+ F12 (PC) or cmd + Fn + Shift + F12 (Mac).

The Esc key will always get you back into the editor.

When switched off, you can temporarily show the tool window bars by pressing the
left Alt key (PC) twice or tapping and holding down the left cmd button (Mac). This
way, you can switch tool windows swiftly and save screen space at the same time.

Navigating inside the tool window

If the tool window contains a list (and most of them do, actually) to navigate or
search inside the tool window, focus on the tool window, and just start typing
the search text. It doesn't matter if it is a project or another tool window:
IntelliJ IDEA will search for the characters you typed on the fly, as shown in
the following screenshot:

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Chapter 1

Tool windows set up for a specific project

There is a very useful plugin you can find in the IntelliJ IDEA plugin repository
named ToolWindow manager. We will talk more about installing plugins later
in this chapter.
This plugin makes tool window buttons available to be controlled on a per-project
basis. It allows the creation of tool window profiles, that is, you can set specific tool
windows to be hidden for one project and shown for another. This is the way to
keep your IDE clean and tidy.
To access the settings, go to Window | Tool Window Management | Configure
Preferred Availabilities from the main menu, as shown in the following screenshot:

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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

Next, set up preferences for particular tool windows. Select Hide to switch off the
specific tool window and Show to turn it on, as shown in the following screenshot:

Editor tabs
An important part of the workspace is the editor tabs. They represent opened files
and have a context menu with file-specific options, such as adding a file to a favorites
list or using version control on the file.
Tabs are great to switch files, but there is a drawback here. They occupy some of the
editor space when you have many files opened. The limit of the visible tab count can
be set by navigating to Settings | Editor | General | Editor tabs (PC) or IntelliJ
IDEA | Preferences | Editor | Editor tabs (Mac) dialog box. IntelliJ IDEA autocloses
tabs if the tab count exceeds the defined limit. This is a very useful feature to reduce
the tab clutter. IntelliJ IDEA will always close the least used tab.
Consider switching tabs off completely. It may sound a little weird at the beginning,
but when you develop the habit of using keyboard shortcuts to navigate through
opened files, you will not need tabs, and will regain some of the valuable editor space.
Use Ctrl + E (PC) or cmd + E (Mac) to display the list of opened files.
Use Ctrl + Shift + E (PC) or cmd + Shift + E (Mac) to display the list of
recently edited files. You can also switch between the last opened files
with Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift + Tab.

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Chapter 1

Crafting your settings

In the next section, we will discuss the options of the IDEsetting keyboard
shortcuts, colors, fonts, and plugins.

Searching for options

The settings dialog is available from the main menu by navigating to File | Settings
(PC) or IntelliJ IDEA | Preferences (Mac). You can also use the wrench icon on the
toolbar or Ctrl + Alt + S (PC) or cmd + , (Mac) keyboard shortcuts. All of the settings
are divided into two groups: one for project-specific settings (such as code style,
version control, and so on) and one for global, IDE settings (such as appearance or
HTTP proxy, for example).
There are many options here. The good thing is you can use the search field to search
for a specific option. Just start typing the option name and the dialog box will be
searched from top to bottom to present you the result.
For example, if you introduce a "typo" in the search box, you will be presented with
the Inspection project settings, where you can turn the Spelling/Typo inspection
option off. In the Editor/Colors & Font/General section, you can change colors
for misspelled words.

Setting keyboard shortcuts

IntelliJ IDEA is a keyboard-centric IDE. Any action you can do by using your mouse,
you can do by using the keyboard as well.
It's possible to completely redefine default IntelliJ IDEA keymaps to suit your
needs. The keyboard shortcuts configuration is available in the Keymap section
in the IDE settings.
There are some predefined keymaps available. Whether you come from using Eclipse
or NetBeans, you can find your well-known keymap here and apply it. Please note
that predefined keymaps are not editable. To modify the keymap, you must create
and edit a copy.

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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

When defining a new keyboard shortcut, the Second Stroke keyboard shortcut
editor feature is very useful. You can use this to set up double strokes, easy to
remember keyboard shortcuts, or even shortcut groups. You can define your base
shortcut, such as Ctrl + Shift + O for example, and then numbers as second strokes,
as shown in the following screenshot:

The Abbreviation option in the keyboard shortcut editor is used to quickly find the
Search Everything (double Shift) dialog box. The Search Everything dialog box will
be discussed in Chapter 3, The Editor.

Colors and fonts

In IntelliJ IDEA, you can change your preferable colors and font's layout for syntax
and error highlighting in the editor, search results, debugger, and consoles.
To do this, open Editor and then Colors & Fonts in the IDE settings dialog box.
IntelliJ IDEA comes with some predefined color schemes. You can select one of them,
or create your own, and configure its settings to your liking.
Note that you are not allowed to change any of the predefined schemes. If you
decide to tweak the existing theme, you have to copy it first. To change the editor
font, select Font from the Colors & Fonts section of the IDE settings page.

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Chapter 1

Many nice color themes can be found at

http://www.ideacolorthemes.org.

For example, if you use the Darcula IDE theme, the Obsidian color scheme looks
good, as shown in the following screenshot:

There is a truly great font designed especially for developers: Source Code
Pro. This font family was created specifically for coding environments
it's very readable. It's available free of charge from Adobe, at GitHub
https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro.
You can download Source Code Pro for Windows, Linux, and OS X
as well.

Picking your plugins

The IntelliJ IDEA plugin repository is available on the Internet at http://plugins.
jetbrains.com/?idea or from the IDE itself, by going to the Plugins section in
the Settings page. Going to the Plugins section in the IDE is more convenient in
comparison to the Internet repository. All you have to do is find your plugin, install,
and restart the IDE.
To install JetBrains' plugin, click on the Install JetBrains plugin button. To install a
third-party plugin, choose Browse repositories. In the next dialog box, you can filter
the available plugins by category, or find a specific plugin just by typing its name.
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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

You can sort the list of plugins by the download count or rating to see
the most popular (and probably the most useful) plugins at the top of
the list:

To deactivate the installed plugin, uncheck the checkbox next to its name. To
uninstall the plugin, use the context menu, but take note that bundled JetBrains
plugins cannot be uninstalled from within the IDE, as shown here:

Some of the plugins add new languages to the IntelliJ IDEA arsenal. If you develop
in a language other than Java, just filter the plugins list using the Custom Languages
option. When you install the plugins, the on-the-fly analysis, hints, and refactoring
will be available in your IDE. These plugins include, for example, Scala, Python,
Ruby, PHP, and many others.
The next huge group of plugins is available when you filter using Framework
Integration. There is a big chance you will find support for the framework you
use in your project, such as AngularJS or Play, for example.
If you are new to IntelliJ IDEA, there is a plugin that is especially useful called Key
promoter. It will show you a banner with the keyboard shortcut for the action you
just performed using the mouse. It will help you memorize keyboard shortcuts and
quickly become a keyboard ninja:

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Chapter 1

Use the Key promoter plugin available in the plugins repository to

see how easy you can make the same action you just did using your
mouse, by only using your keyboard!

Feel free to browse JetBrains and the third-party plugins directory. It's a real gold
mine to extend the IDE functionality. Select the plugin, read the description to the
right, click on Install, restart the IDE, and you're all set.

Configuration tips and tricks

In this section, you will be presented with some configuration tips, such as sharing
settings and tuning IntelliJ IDEA.

Exporting and importing settings

If you have your IDE set the way you like, it may be a good idea to back up all
settings. Sometimes, it's good to have common settings across all team members.
IntelliJ IDEA gives you the ability to archive and export all or specific settings.
To export IDE settings to a JAR archive, do the following:
1. Go to File | Export Settings from the main menu.
2. Specify the settings to export the Export Settings dialog box by selecting
the checkboxes next to them. All of them are selected by default.
3. Specify the fully qualified name and path or click on the Browse button
to choose the target file.

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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

To import IDE settings from a JAR archive, do the following:

1. Go to File | Import Settings from the main menu.
2. Select the desired archive from the Import File Location dialog box.
3. Specify the settings to be imported in the Select Components to Import
dialog box and click on OK.
You should be really careful with importing settings. Importing a set of settings will
overwrite all your settings with the imported set. For example, if you export some
live templates and reimport them during a colleague's installation, the import will
overwrite all their live templates with the imported ones.
There are many nice-looking themes exported this way, available
to be downloaded at http://ideacolorthemes.org. Just pick
and import the JAR file and check out how beautiful your IDE
will look!

Sharing settings
Sometimes it's good to have the same configuration across all members of your team,
organization, or the company. For this purpose, IntelliJ IDEA can use a server to
store IDE settings and share them within your team.
To do this, first download the IntelliJ Configuration Server plugin, using the Plugins
page of the Settings dialog box.
To connect to the IntelliJ Configuration Server, use your JetBrains account. If you don't
have the account, you can create one on the JetBrains website using the link provided
in the login dialog.
You can connect to IntelliJ Configuration Server in two ways: during the first startup
or on demand.
During the first IntelliJ IDEA startup after installing the plugin, you can select the
connection option for the next startup, such as Show login dialog, Login silently,
or Do not login.
When the configuration server is connected, the green icon is displayed in the status
bar, as shown in the following screenshot:

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Chapter 1

Otherwise, the red icon will be presented:

You can log in to the IntelliJ Configuration Server at any time using the button on
the status bar.
The IntelliJ IDEA server stores almost all of the IDE and project settings except for
those containing local paths. Your code style settings, keymaps, fonts, color schemes,
and inspection profiles will be synced.
Take note that the IntelliJ IDEA server is a public, third-party server. It's secured by a
username and password and uses SSL communication, but if you are very concerned
about your privacy, you should share your settings using the export/import feature
rather than the IntelliJ Configuration Server.
If you have to use a proxy to access the Internet in your
environment, you can set up the proxy settings in the login
dialog box.

Tuning IntelliJ IDEA

IDEA's Virtual Machine settings are usually very good out of the box. However,
when you work on a specific huge project and decide that you want to tweak IntelliJ
IDEA's own virtual machine settings, you can change that in the following locations,
depending on your operating system.
On Windows, you can tweak IntelliJ IDEA's own virtual machine settings by
executing the following code:
<IntelliJ IDEA installation folder>/bin/idea.exe.vmoptions

Alternatively, you can use the following code:

<IntelliJ IDEA installation folder>/bin/idea64.exe.vmoptions

On Linux and Unix systems, you can tweak IntelliJ IDEA's own virtual machine
settings by executing the following code:
<IntelliJ IDEA installation folder>/bin/idea.vmoptions

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Get to Know Your IDE, Fast

Alternatively, you can use the following code:

<IntelliJ IDEA installation folder>/bin/idea64.vmoptions

On OS X, since Version 12, the file /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/

bin/idea.vmoptions should be copied to the following path:
~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdeaXX/idea.vmoptions

In this file, you can find, or change, Java Virtual Machine settings that IntelliJ
IDEA runs on. For example, to increase the IntelliJ IDEA heap size, modify the
-Xmx setting. If you keep getting an OutOfMemoryError message in the PermGen
space exceptions, try changing the -XX:MaxPermSize setting.
The file-scanning applications (such as Spotlight or Alfred on OS
X, for example) can slow down the IDE a bit; think about excluding
IDEA's folders from their scope.
Having an SSD drive to develop helps a lot with the performance.
Indexing, looking for usages, and other file-related tasks will be a lot
faster on the SSD drive.

Summary
In this chapter, we discussed what IntelliJ IDEA is, briefly presented a comparison
of the available editions, and revealed the main workspace elements and how to
customize them.
Install IntelliJ IDEA and try to set up your IDE the way you like it. Use the tips
provided to configure the workspace like a pro. Back up your configuration or
share it with others.
In the next chapter, we will create and import a project and start the actual work.

[ 24 ]

Get more information IntelliJ IDEA Essentials

Where to buy this book

You can buy IntelliJ IDEA Essentials from the Packt Publishing website.
Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and most internet
book retailers.
Click here for ordering and shipping details.

www.PacktPub.com

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