What’s new in IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 EAP 2?

Zlata Kalyuzhnaya

Our work on the next major version of IntelliJ IDEA is in full swing. We have been checking and polishing the IDE during our IntelliJ Quality marathon, and today we are ready to give you the second EAP build for the upcoming IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3, which comes with huge pack of highly anticipated fixes and improvements.

As usual, the EAP builds for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate are free to use, but they will expire within 30 days of the build date.

Improved “Compare with Current” view

With v2019.2, we changed the ‘Compare with Current’ action into 2 different actions: ‘Compare with Current’ and ‘Show Diff with Working Tree’. The updated ‘Compare with Current’ action shows the difference in commits, while the ‘Show Diff with Working Tree’ action shows the file diff.

Based on the feedback we’ve been receiving we have continued to work on the ‘Compare with Current’ view and have added a bunch of usability improvements to make the display of the comparison result more clear.

Firstly, we added the tab title which specifies the branches that are compared. Also, we added a bar that clarifies the comparison direction. And now when the view is empty the IDE displays an explanation why.
Also, there is a new ‘Swap branches’ action that swaps the comparison direction of the branches.

We plan to improve this view further and our next step will be to add more information about the reversed comparison to the bar of the Compare tab. This will make it more clear if it is worth swapping branches. Here is the ticket you can use to follow the progress of this task or to share your feedback: IDEA-222141.

Contrast scrollbars

One more usability issue has been resolved – now you can make the scrollbars more visible. Go to Preferences/Settings | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance and enable the “Use contrast scrollbars” checkbox.
This new option will be backported to IntelliJ IDEA 2019.2.3 as well.

Please note, that starting from v2019.2 macOS users, can configure the editor scrollbar color and opacity at Preferences | Editor | Color Scheme | General | Editor | Vertical Scrollbar. Please let us know if you need this feature on Windows or Linux by upvoting this ticket: IDEA-102320.

Ability to search in a selected area when using the Find action

It’s now possible to search only in a selected area using the Find action (cmd+F / Ctrl +F). Simply select the code piece you need in the editor and invoke the Find action and the IDE will perform the search only in the selected area. If you need to extend the search area and perform the search within the whole file, press the cmd + F / Ctrl + F shortcut a second time or alternatively toggle the In Selection option from the bar.
Previously the In Selection option was available only when you were using the Replace action (cmd+R /Ctrl +R).

Support for annotation processors was greatly improved for Gradle projects

The upcoming IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 now creates an Annotation Processing profile based on the Gradle configuration and assigns relevant modules with it. All the required files are generated during a build.
Also, the IDE now supports the annotationProcessor dependency configuration introduced in Gradle 4.6.

Other notable fixes worth mentioning:

• Fixed the performance issue that caused the slow execution of the “Resolving external annotations” background task: IDEA-200003.
• Fixed the issue that caused the focus loss when switching between IDE windows using Cmd ~ on macOS: IDEA-216019.
• The IDE supports native password storage on Linux: IDEA-185926.
• Keyboard navigation works in the Debug tool window: IDEA-167805.
• It’s now possible to resize the project area if the editor tabs are on the right: IDEA-147414.

The bundled JBR11 was updated to v11.0.4+10-b480.2, which among other changes, fixed an issue with the Navigation Bar.

For more details please read the IDE and JBR release notes.

Get the new EAP build right now! Don’t hesitate to share any and all feedback with us in our issue tracker!

Happy Developing!

Subscribe to IntelliJ IDEA Blog updates

Subscribe form

By submitting this form, I agree to the JetBrains Privacy Policy Notification icon

By submitting this form, I agree that JetBrains s.r.o. ("JetBrains") may use my name, email address, and location data to send me newsletters, including commercial communications, and to process my personal data for this purpose. I agree that JetBrains may process said data using third-party services for this purpose in accordance with the JetBrains Privacy Policy. I understand that I can revoke this consent at any time in my profile. In addition, an unsubscribe link is included in each email.

Submit

Thanks, we've got you!