Enable / Disble plug-ins per project

Hi,
are there any plans to implement enable/disbale plugins (per project) in IDEA ? I think it's frustrating loading a bunch unneeded plugins for one project , while they are used in totaly different one.

59
56 comments

Hello lllopo,

Do you see any noticeable effect of the inactive plugins?

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

l> Hi,
l> are there any plans to implement enable/disbale plugins (per project)
l> in IDEA ? I think it's frustrating loading a bunch unneeded plugins
l> for one project , while they are used in totaly different one.


0

1. Much less crowded interface.
2. Much less exceptions in the EAP's :)).
3. Less memory usage, I suppose, although It depends of the implementation ... anyway - p.1 is quite important for me.

2

Hello lllopo,

Any specific details on pt.1?

We'd much rather reduce the UI and performance impact of functionality you
do not use, than provide more ways to remove the functionality.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

l> 1. Much less crowded interface.
l> 2. Much less exceptions in the EAP's :)).
l> 3. Less memory usage, I suppose, although It depends of the
l> implementation ... anyway - p.1 is quite important for me.


0

Mostly the tool windows, of course. But I want to notice, that merging the Projects, Packages, J2EE etc. was a bad move imho.

Also - more plugins lead to dramaticaly longer loading times (for example the SQL plugin slows down the loading visibly). I don't know about the runtime performance, but I suppose it's hit by the plugins too, so a good disable impl. can help on that point too probably.

0

Hello lllopo,

As for the toolwindows, this is more of a limitation of our windowing system,
which does not provide a standard way to hide unused toolwindows.

As for the performance, this is, to a large degree, a plugin bug. Any plugin
should delay as much of the initialization as possible until the moment when
it's actually used - this will provide more benefits than a general solution
for disabiling plugins.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Software Developer
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

l> Mostly the tool windows, of course. But I want to notice, that
l> merging the Projects, Packages, J2EE etc. was a bad move imho.
l>
l> Also - more plugins lead to dramaticaly longer loading times (for
l> example the SQL plugin slows down the loading visibly). I don't know
l> about the runtime performance, but I suppose it's hit by the plugins
l> too, so a good disable impl. can help on that point too probably.
l>


0

I see. 10x for the reply. If that's the logic behind the plugins init, really, it's better to work on the "hide tool windows" feature then (per project ;) ).

0

Hi there. Reviving this thread after 13+ years because I found a legitimate need for this feature. Not just a 'bug' with plugin initialization. My use case revolves around having to switch among multiple projects, one of which is an aggregate gradle project containing > 100 projects. The issue I have is that the gradle project is mostly Java, but a handful of the projects have some ruby environments with rake tasks. This wasn't an issue until I started working in another project that was full ruby. When I started with that I added the Ruby plugin, but now everytime I switch back to the gradle project, IntelliJ tries to run the rake tasks for unused projects and modifies files every time.

Ideally I would be able to exclude the ruby plugin entirely for my gradle project, rather than having to disable it wholesale and restart the IDE.

9

Another use case are plugins which operate on general filetypes e.g. Ansible, Cloudformation, Kubernetes plugins operate on YAML files. These plugins will give different style suggestion/issues and auto-complete suggestions. Manually managing the active plugin is very cumbersome

3

And another reason I found today:

Out of curiosity, I wanted to test/check Codota plugin. Codota plugin creators ensure that code is safe and I believe them, though I don't want to use it/test on my commercial projects.

Right now, I'm disabling it every time I want to switch my commercial projects and it is little bit painful. Not a dealbreaker for me, I just wanted to add my opinion.

 

Thanks

2

I think we need this ability to enable/disable plugins per projects basis. I think, if you can improve your IDEs (WebStorm, IDEA) that it doesn't need a restart whenever we install/uninstall, enable/disable plugins; you don't even have to build this feature, someone will eventually write a workspace (vscode terminology) like plugin that allows to enable/disable plugins per project.

The restarting process is painful, and it's so old. We are in 2020 with better ways this.

Here are some reasons why we need it:

  1. Plugins like Kite, Codota, Tabnine shouldn't be enabled all the time, or we should have option to enable in a few project.
  2. There are many people who are still using old machines, like me on Macbook Pro early 2011 with 8GB memory, dual core process, small screen (real-estate).  As a software developer we should think of these people who have that kind of configurations, and that works for them -- machines haven't gone slower; developers have made software more resource hungry as computers got much faster; hence the net result is -- user still feels the lag or slowness or discontentment on latest machines as well.When computers were slower we worked harder to optimize to make software faster; now it's otherwise -- we are actually not doing much.
  3. We don't need all plugins in all projects; I work on different kind of projects, for some I use WebStorm (for it's simplicity -- less clutter), and for others I use IDEA. Now if you make sure IDE doesn't need to be restarted, I might actually just use IDEA for every project, and enable/disable plugins as and when it's needed.

You should probably work on the removing the need of restarting the IDE; there are plenty of developers who will build some awesome plugin to make workspace or such things happen.

 

Cheers

Abdul Qabiz

8

I am another developer with multiple frameworks across multiple projects. My WebStorm is slowing down to the point I'm considering ditching Intellij instead of renewing the license. I hope someone from the JetBrains will finally take time to respond here.

 

Thanks

5

I want to also support this - for example I dont want to use SonarLint for one of my project (old code which I dont want/need to fix) and it is totally filled with warnings and almost unreadable..

2

Another vote to support this. I use the R plugin for one project, but it activates features on a second one that get in the way.

0

14 years... Upvote.

3

+1 As I work simultaneously with several projects (client Angular, server Spring Boot, mobile Nativescript), platorm-specific  plugins interfere with other projects and make big mess in code check-up.

2

Is this still not possible? 15 years has passed, and many people are asking for this, myself included :)

2

I work for a client that has developed a plugin that modifies the code before each commit to meet their standards. I'd like to isolate that plugin from the rest of my projects.

1

+1

0

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