Unable to install IntelliJ in Arch Linux, Sway
I tried to install IntelliJ in Linux last night (June 20, 2021) and failed to get it to operate.
First I tried what it suggested on the JetBrains site, which was pretty minimal. They basically just say "Down/load" with no instructions. So, you download the tar.gz file, then I unzip it to a directory. In the directory, there is a file that gives again some minimal instructions, which basically just say to run idea.sh which is in the bin subdirectory. So, I do that and a small splash screen appears on a black window background for a few seconds, then a gray box of the same size appears in the black window, then it freezes. There is no log in any obvious place.
I then try a different method to install it, using the AUR. I sudo pacman -S xxxx where xxxx is the name of the Intellij AUR repository. The pacman process appears to run normally, however, no new application appears in my run manager. So, that didn't work either.
What do I do next? Maybe use a different IDE that has a working installation procedure?
SOLUTION AT END OF THREAD
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Hi John,
Installing IntelliJ IDEA as a snap package is one of the most common and reliable ways to install the program on Linux:
Do let us know if you come across any issues using this method as well.
See also:
Hello, first I would like to say that even trying to log in to this forum is an incredible pain in the pass because of all the third party cookies and javascript it uses. This probably accounts for the low usage of this forum.
Secondly, I tried the suggestion of using the snap version of IDEA and it installed, but when I ran it, I got exactly the same error as before. The window titled "Welcome to Intellij IDEA" is black with a gray square in the upper left.
I'm sorry for the problem. Could you please attach IDE logs zipped? Also could you please attach the output you see in the terminal when you launch the ./idea.sh script? Please see Logs directory about the default location of the IDE logs.
Have you had any IDE installations before this one on the system? Thank you.
For uploading you can use https://uploads.jetbrains.com or any file sharing service.
There is no output at all in the shell. When I start it via the command line, a window is created. The small splash screen appears in the window. The window is titled "Welcome to Intellij" or something like that. Then the splash screen turns gray. Then it freezes and does nothing. The terminal where the client was launched with ./idea.sh just hangs and has to be forcibly terminated.
I have uploaded the log here: Upload id: 2021_06_22_TaHANpLo9wqQ4Kyt (file: idea.log)
Could be a Sway wlroots issue. Do other Java Swing-based programs work on the machine? Please try e.g. the Netbeans or JEdit.
Also try 2021.2 EAP from https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IDEADEV/IDEA+2021.2+latest+builds and using other Oracle 11 JDK to run IDE under. The path to the JDK for the IDE to run can be configured in `idea.jdk` file placed in IDE configuration directory, please see Selecting the JDK version the IDE will run under for details.
Unfortunately logs do not show any problems. For more diagnostics it could be useful to get the thread dumps, taken with jstack of the IDE process when it hangs at the splash screen.
I discovered the solution to the problem by finding comments in a different forum and reading documentation for Sway. The problem is that Sway/Wayland is a non-reparenting window manager and Java assumes that its environment is re-parenting and so it acts on Windows through parent windows which will not work in a non-reparenting window manager. The problem affects only Java Swing other GUI-related Java functionality.
The way to solve the problem is to add the following to your .profile file (or .bashrc):
export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1This tells the Java AWT to not assume that it is running in a re-parenting windowing environment.
This problem will affect anyone using Sway or other non-parenting windowing system.
Thank you for the information!
As one would expect, the same issue is present in Sway on Manjaro. Very grateful to find this fix.