IntelliJ IDEA 2020.2 EAP3: Support for Git Installed in WSL2, Java Completion Improvements, and More

Zlata Kalyuzhnaya

IntelliJ IDEA 2020.2 EAP3 is out!

Here are the main highlights of this new build:

• Support for Git installed in WSL2.
• Better autocompletion for Stream API methods.
• New presentation of the search results in Search Everywhere.
• The build output presentation improvements.
• Accessibility improvements.

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

Support for Git installed in WSL2

WSL is becoming an important part of the development process on Windows and we are working on supporting all the necessary workflows in IntelliJ IDEA.

Today we have some great news to share with you – the upcoming IntelliJ IDEA 2020.2 now supports Git installed in WSL2 for working with projects located in the Linux or Windows file systems.

The IDE can switch between Git executables depending on the project location. When a project is opened from WSL (via \\wsl$ path), the IDE will not only automatically switch to Git from WSL but also provide you with the ability to use all the Git-related features in the IDE.

Please note that the upcoming IntelliJ IDEA 2020.2 allows you to use Git only from WSL2, which is available in the May update of Windows 10, version 2004. The IDE will not support WSL1 because, unfortunately, Git from WSL1 does not return output reliably when called from Windows, and this could lead to incorrect results from Git commands – see IDEA-242469 and the corresponding WSL request.

New presentation of the search results in Search Everywhere

Starting with this EAP build, you will see a different, experimental presentation of the search results in the Search Everywhere popup. We’ve removed the grouping of items by type and now show all the items together, based only on its relevance to the search query.

To increase the relevance of the search results in the All tab of the Search Everywhere dialog, we decided to present search results as a single list and not to group elements under the specific groups such as recent Files, Classes, Symbols, or Actions. The place of each group in the search result list is mandatory and when, for example, you search by symbols, then even if there is an element that is ideally suited to the search query, it would not be shown at the top of the list, and it would only be at the top of its group.

This is an experimental feature and we would like to hear your thoughts about it. You can also switch back to the old presentation in Experimental Features that you can access via Find Action (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-A) – the feature name is `search.everywhere.mixed.results`.

Better autocompletion for Stream API methods

Now when you want to make an action on a collection in the stream API mode, you can start typing the actual method you want to call. IntelliJ IDEA will understand that you want to call the stream() method, and it will autocomplete it for you. This works for arrays as well.

Build tool output presentation

Now, the build output of IntelliJ IDEA’s native builder is shown in the Build tool window – the tool window that we already use to report the Gradle and Maven output.
Historically, the build output of the IntelliJ IDEA native builder was shown in the Messages tool window, but we are trying to unify the user experience and show all the build output in the one place.

Accessibility improvements

Now IntelliJ IDEA can detect if you are using a screen-reader and if so, it will automatically enable its accessibility features.

For the full list of issues fixed in this update, see the release notes.

Download the new EAP and try all these new awesome features for yourself. We look forward to your feedback here in the comments, on Twitter, and in our issue tracker.

Happy developing!

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