IntelliJ IDEA integrates with many different tools used for software development. Most of these tools run in the system shell under the hood. Sometimes you don’t even realize that instead of running a command in the integrated terminal and reading console output, you can use the relevant IDE feature, like a tool window or a dialog that implements this functionality.
For example, the diff viewer actually runs the diff command in the system shell to produce results. Another example is the Log tab in the Git tool window, which is based on the output of the git log command. (more…)