WebStorm 2022.2 Beta Is Here With Remote Development Improvements

David Watson

WebStorm 2022.2 has reached the Beta milestone! You can upgrade to the latest build using the Toolbox App or from our website. To catch up on what has already been implemented, check out our previous EAP blog posts.

DOWNLOAD WEBSTORM 2022.2 Beta

We’d like to thank everyone who has tried the EAP builds and shared their feedback with us! If you’re among those who have tried them but haven’t had a chance to respond yet, please do. Here’s our issue tracker.

In this release, WebStorm features built-in support for remote development, under the Beta label. If you’ve missed the news, you can learn more about it here. Below you can find the most notable improvements for remote development we’re introducing in WebStorm 2022.2.

New to remote development?

Remote development was introduced last year in WebStorm. In essence, it splits your IDE into local and remote components. The IDE itself is installed as a backend service on a remote server, where it loads a project. At the same time, a thin client is running locally and provides a working UI. These two components are then connected via SSH, giving you a fluid local experience while the remote server handles all the heavy lifting.

Remote development is available for free. Here’s how to get started.

JetBrains Gateway

All these remote development updates can be accessed both from the bundled remote development feature as well as JetBrains Gateway, a standalone application that serves as the single entry point to all remote development environments.

Welcome screen

We’ve updated the Welcome screen to make it more convenient to set up and run your backend. Here you can choose your preferred method for backend orchestration. You can provision a server manually or choose a provider with ready-to-go dev environments, like Space.

Uninstall backends

With WebStorm 2022.2, you can easily uninstall your outdated IDE backends. To do this, simply follow these steps:

1. On the Recent projects screen, click the Manage IDEs button.
2. Here you can find the list of the currently installed IDEs.
3. Select the IDE you want to delete and confirm your choice.

JetBrains Client

As we move closer and closer to a stable release, we’re working to bridge the gap between the experience of developing remotely and working in local IDEs.

View VCS annotations when developing remotely

We’ve made it possible to view VCS annotations from the gutter menu in the JetBrains Client. This allows you to trace project changes right on the thin client when developing remotely. You can see who made changes in the code, review the differences between commits, and navigate through the project history.

Terminal

The bulk of the terminal upgrades are centered around improving the connection between the thin client and the IDE backend, making the remote development experience as fluid as local development.

Port forwarding

In response to the many requests we receive from our users, port forwarding functionality is now available for processes running on the terminal.

Usability

We’ve slightly improved the user experience when working with the terminal. Now terminal processes such as PowerShell, Bash, and Zsh are terminated when you close the remote session. Additionally, you can close the terminal with the Exit command.

Other notable fixes and improvements

In addition to the new features we’ve included for remote development, we’ve also worked hard on improving stability, fixing several major bugs that have been discovered over the course of the EAP. These fixes include:

• Fix for the host status so it is shown consistently for the recent projects list (GTW-1123).
• Support for CSH and TCSH as login shells for remote hosts (GTW-747).
• Fix for deployment so it no longer fails if SFTP is disabled or if the SFTP path is non-standard (GTW-870).
• Fix for a bug that had prevented the use of capital letters for input (CWM-5749).
• Fix for source navigation so it now works correctly in the Run console (CWM-5029).
• Fix for the progress indicator so it is now consistently displayed during indexing (CWM-5911).
• Improvements to the Save & Restart functionality in the Backend Control Center (CWM-6073).

That’s it for today. For the full list of improvements available in WebStorm 2022.2 Beta, check out the release notes.

The WebStorm team

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