Plugin Developers Appreciation Day

Jakub Chrzanowski

Also called add-ons, extensions, or widgets, plugins extend an application’s core functionality. Plugins are essential to the development community and the ecosystem, and the JetBrains community is no exception.

At JetBrains, we’re always flattered when our users want to add their ideas to our products. This is why we made writing plugins easier for third-party developers as early as 2003. We released IntelliJ IDEA 3.0 with the Open API, which later evolved into the IntelliJ Platform SDK. Since then, most of the products we’ve launched have provided that capability, allowing you to extend virtually every feature to your liking. We have some great resources available for plugin developers interested in a product’s extensibility:

• IntelliJ Platform SDK (this applies to all IntelliJ-based IDEs, including IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, PhpStorm, Rider, and lots more)
• TeamCity Plugins
• YouTrack Widgets DevGuide
• ReSharper DevGuide
• Space Applications
• Fleet Plugins (WIP)
• Ktor Plugins (WIP)

Appreciation

Back in 2009, the 28th of January was declared Thank a Plugin Developer Day to celebrate WordPress plugin developers. JetBrains would like to join this initiative and take the opportunity to thank all those involved in developing plugins for JetBrains IDEs and team tools.

Whether you are a novice in the realm of plugin development, have created a plugin or two, or are actively selling your plugins on JetBrains Marketplace – we want to celebrate your efforts! Don’t underestimate the value of your work, as it helps millions of your fellow developers improve their coding experience, boost their productivity, and enjoy developing even more.

We’re always happy to chat with you in the JBPlatform Slack or the dedicated Open API forum. Feel free to get in touch with us any time!

As a token of appreciation, JetBrains Marketplace waived the paid plugin fee for a week, sending 100% of plugin sales to the authors. We announced the extension of the JetBrains Community Contributor (JBCC) program for JetBrains Marketplace to include JetBrains Marketplace and the outstanding members of the JetBrains Platform community. We also ran a raffle to encourage plugin users to spread the word about their favorite plugins. Here are the most frequently mentioned ones: Nyan Progress Bar, Rainbow Brackets, GitHub Copilot, JPA Buddy, IdeaVim.

Picked plugins

• Nyan Progress Bar
  This plugin modifies the default progress bar of the IntelliJ-based IDEs and introduces Nyan Cat, the rainbow to mark the progress, and specific sound played in a loop. Some of our users can’t live without it anymore.
• Rainbow Brackets
  Another plugin that introduces more colors into your IDE. This case adjusts matching braces within the editor to help distinguish between all of your parentheses, brackets, braces, and chevrons in your code.
• GitHub Copilot
  The GitHub Copilot plugin integrates IDEs with GitHub’s AI pair programming service. It provides code completions while working within the editor to speed up the development process based on the given suggestions.
• JPA Buddy
  An IntelliJ IDEA plugin for Java and Kotlin developers to make Hibernate, EclipseLink, Spring Data JPA, and other technologies much more straightforward. Thanks to the visual designers and rich code generation capabilities, the overall development experience is even more robust.
• IdeaVim
  Vim editor enchanted in the IntelliJ-based IDEs. The plugin lets you bring Vim features and Vim plugins emulations straight to the IDE.

Development

If you’re considering developing a plugin for a JetBrains product, please see the links listed in the first section above.

In addition to the product extensibility documentation, we provide tools and resources dedicated to speeding up the development process and making it more accessible, including:

• Plugin Ideas – a place for sharing ideas for plugins and suggestions of functionalities missing from our products.
• IntelliJ Platform Plugin Template – a template that helps create plugins for IntelliJ-based IDEs using the curated scaffold.
• Revamping Plugins blog series – sharing the experience of updating outdated plugins to align with the latest IntelliJ Platform SDK guidelines.
• Free Licenses for open-source development – non-commercial open-source projects are welcome to apply for free licenses for JetBrains tools!

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