intellij-community VS theia

The real-world example from IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition:

> from IntelliJ will require 1–3 plugins. 3 for Java, Docker, 3 plugins for React, npm, Prettier, SonarLint, Copilot, database, Gitlens, Maven

How old is your copy of IJ that you need to download the Maven plugin? To the very best of my knowledge, every one of these in the "plugins" directory ships with IJ and is not something one needs to download from the JetBrains marketplace: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/idea/25...

I obviously can't link to the GitHub repo for IJ Ultimate but the DataGrip behavior is similarly bundled. What may be up for hair-splitting is that think they do use the concept of plugins as an update mechanism. That is: I don't think one could download a copy of IJ Ultimate that doesn't speak Java, Docker, npm, database, or Maven. But they do use plugins such that one could acquire a bug-fix to (e.g.) the Docker plugin without having to re-download the whole IJ

I also believe this, and we're actually about half way there via MPS <https://github.com/JetBrains/MPS#readme> but I'm pretty sure that dream is dead until this LLM hype blows over, since LLMs are not going to copy-paste syntax trees until the other dream of a universal representation materializes[1]

1: There have been several attempts at Universal ASTs, including (unsurprisingly) a JVM-centric one from JetBrains https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/idea/24...

Hacktoberfest 2024 is here, and I’ve already contributed another pull request, this time to the IntelliJ IDEA repository! 🌟

Most of the code is from Intellij-Community (Apache License).

https://github.com/pragtical/plugins/commit/54096a6461f5c034... makes me long for The One Grammar To Rule Them ™

I thought for a while that TextMate bundles[1] were that, especially since JetBrains[2], Linguist[3] and VSCode[4] honor them. However, in the spirit of "the good thing about standards ..." highlight.js does[5] almost the same thing that Pragtical does which makes me feel even worse

I had high hopes for Tree-Sitter since it seems to have really won mindshare, but the idea of having an executable grammar spec[6] is ... well, no wonder it hasn't caught on outside of that specific ecosystem

1: https://github.com/rspec/rspec.tmbundle/blob/1.1.12/Syntaxes...

2: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/idea/24...

3: https://github.com/github-linguist/linguist/blob/v7.30.0/lib...

4: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-textmate

5: https://github.com/highlightjs/highlight.js/blob/11.10.0/src...

6: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/blob/v0.22.6/test...

Also, no BuSL stupidity, they're all Apache 2 AFAIK: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/idea/23...

And the "all you can eat" toolbox license is just a staggeringly good deal, IMHO, which also comes with a "you can keep your license forever, just no updates" which is way different from setting subscription-based licensing money on fire when your license expires. Whoever came up with that should be applauded because it really drives down my "what about" anxiety of paying subscription money for IDEs

I readily admit I am not familiar enough with fossil to know about the impedance mismatch, but I'll point out that https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-plugins/tree/idea/241.... https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/idea/24... https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/idea/24... https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/idea/24... may a long way toward finding how they think about those operations

MS is a bit weird. After realizing that most competent developers had left the MS ecosystem, they went for a Zeitenwende. But they did only for 90%.

I wonder to what extent this halfheartedness should be ascribed to the MS org chart or to reasoning like "we should prevent a competent competitor to run away with our tools".

In the mean time, there is a capable replacement named Theia [0] with none of the strings attached. We as a whole would do best to move to that one. [1]

___

0. https://theia-ide.org/#theiaide

1. That is to say: for vscode kind of experience. Native IDE's are unbeatable imho.

As someone who has recently tried to refactor our app atop of VSCode (treating it like a platform), we got burned by the UI design decisions that are not straightforward to overcome, let alone maintain. The closed-source MS marketplace did not help either towards our OSS goals.

However, I found Theia (https://theia-ide.org) on HN (like a bunch of other cool things; this is one way I justify the time I spend/sink on this site) and find it a much better fit for our OSS goals (foundation owned, open-source marketplace) with full mod-ability while being compatible to VSCode extensions API (in theory). I recommend you look into it for your app.

You should give Theia Ide [1] a try. It's plugin-compatible with VSCode, same user experience. It's slower to start and takes more memory but on my 3 y.o. intel Mac it is definitely snappier than VScode.

[1] https://theia-ide.org/

No, it's not a fork.

Theia reuses some components (like the Monaco code editor), but the reason it looks and feels a lot like VSCode is mostly that they decided to copy it.

They explain the reasons for creating a VSCode clone here [1]. In short, VSCode is not really open source, and Theia wants the code to be both truly free and unencumbered by Microsoft's licensing and proprietary code, and also available to commercial vendors to use as the foundation for commercial products.

This earlier HN discussion has a lot more discussion [2].

I think the Eclipse people could have communicated all of this a lot better. When you put a VSCode clone in front of developers, your first task needs to be to explain how it's not a fork, and why it exists. The Theia site's front page [3] doesn't even mention VSCode by name.

[1] https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/mike-milinkovich/eclipse-thei...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738607

[3] https://theia-ide.org/

Collaboration capabilities are a high rank priority for me. After years of not really getting anywhere, there's been some promising movement this year, but still in long open draft form. https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/2842

Theia Github

Running containers online has been one of the most exciting recent trends in virtualization aligned with DevOps practices where containers are critical to enable efficient testing and deployments. CDE are accessed online with an IDE via network connection (Microsoft Visual Studio Code has such a feature as explained here) or using a Cloud IDE (an IDE running in a web browser such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Eclipse Theia and others.)

As an alternative to VSCode, consider Theia[1].

Open-source, runs all the VSCode extensions, etc.

[1] https://theia-ide.org