IntelliJ Platform Plugin SDK Help

Publishing a Plugin

When your plugin is ready, you can publish it to a JetBrains Marketplace plugin repository so that other users can install it in IDE. The first plugin publication, even when a project uses the Gradle setup, must be uploaded manually.

Before publishing a plugin, ensure it follows all recommendations from Plugin User Experience (UX). For an optimal presentation, see the guidelines from Plugin Overview page. The Busy Plugin Developers. Episode 2 discusses 5 tips for optimizing JetBrains Marketplace plugin page in more detail. See also Marketing about widgets and badges.

Uploading a Plugin to JetBrains Marketplace

Before publishing your plugin, make sure it is signed. For more details on generating a proper certificate and configuring the signing process, check the Plugin Signing article.

Creating JetBrains Account

To upload your plugin to the JetBrains Marketplace, you must log in with your personal JetBrains Account.

  1. Open the JetBrains Account Center and click Create Account.

  2. Fill in all fields in the Create JetBrains Account form that opens and click Register.

    Uploading plugin

    To upload your plugin to JetBrains Marketplace:

    1. Log in to JetBrains Marketplace with your personal JetBrains account.

    2. On your Profile page that opens, click Add new plugin.

    3. Fill in the Add new plugin form that opens and click the Add the plugin button to upload your plugin.

    See also Marketplace Docs.

      Uploading a New Version

      New versions can be uploaded manually on the plugin's detail page, see Marketplace Docs for details.

      Publishing Plugin With Gradle

      Once you have configured Gradle support, and uploaded the plugin to the plugin repository at least once, you can automatically build and deploy your plugin to the JetBrains Marketplace.

      Building Distribution

      For initial upload, manual distribution or local installation, invoke the buildPlugin Gradle task to create the plugin distribution. If you configured you project to rely on Plugin Signing, use the signPlugin task instead.

      The resulting ZIP file is located in build/distributions and can then be installed via Install Plugin from Disk... action or uploaded to a Custom Plugin Repository.

      Providing Your Personal Access Token to Gradle

      To deploy a plugin to the JetBrains Marketplace, you need to supply your Personal Access Token, which you can find on your profile page, in My Tokens section.

      To create a new token, provide its name and click the Generate Token button. A new token will be created and displayed right below.

      This section describes two options to supply your Personal Access Token via Gradle using:

      • Environment variables,

      • Parameters to the Gradle task.

      Using Environment Variables

      Start by defining an environment variable such as:

      export ORG_GRADLE_PROJECT_intellijPublishToken='YOUR_TOKEN'

      Now provide the environment variable in the run configuration with which you run the publishPlugin task locally. To do so, create a Gradle run configuration (if not already done), choose your Gradle project, specify the publishPlugin task, and then add the environment variable.

      publishPlugin { token.set(System.getenv("ORG_GRADLE_PROJECT_intellijPublishToken")) }
      publishPlugin { token = System.getenv("ORG_GRADLE_PROJECT_intellijPublishToken") }

      Note that you still need to put some default values (can be empty) in the Gradle properties because otherwise, you will get a compilation error.

      Using Parameters for the Gradle Task

      Like using environment variables, you can also pass your token as a parameter to the Gradle task. For example, you can provide the parameter

      -Dorg.gradle.project.intellijPublishToken=YOUR_TOKEN

      on the command line or by putting it in the arguments of your Gradle run configuration.

      Note that also, in this case, you still need to put some default values in your Gradle properties.

      Deploying a Plugin with Gradle

      The first step when deploying a plugin is to confirm that it works correctly. You may wish to verify this by installing your plugin from disk on a fresh instance of your target IDE(s).

      Signing a Plugin

      The Marketplace signing is designed to ensure that plugins are not modified over the course of the publishing and delivery pipeline. In version 1.x, the Gradle IntelliJ Plugin provides the signPlugin task, which will be executed automatically right before the publishPlugin.

      For more details on generating a proper certificate and configuring the signPlugin task, check the Plugin Signing article.

      Publishing a Plugin

      Once you are confident the plugin works as intended, make sure the plugin version is updated, as the JetBrains Marketplace won't accept multiple artifacts with the same version.

      To deploy a new version of your plugin to the JetBrains Marketplace, invoke the publishPlugin Gradle task.

      Now check the most recent version of your plugin on the JetBrains Marketplace. If successfully deployed, any users who currently have your plugin installed on an available version of the IntelliJ Platform are notified of a new update available as soon as the update has been verified.

      Specifying a Release Channel

      You may also deploy plugins to a release channel of your choosing, by configuring the publishPlugin.channels property. For example:

      publishPlugin { channels.set(listOf("beta")) }
      publishPlugin { channels = ['beta'] }

      When empty, this uses the default plugin repository, available to all JetBrains Marketplace users. However, you can publish it to an arbitrarily-named channel. These non-default release channels are treated as separate repositories.

      When using a non-default release channel, users need to configure a new custom plugin repository in their IDE to install your plugin. For example, if you specify publishPlugin.channels = ['canary'], then users need to add the https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugins/canary/list repository to install the plugin and receive updates.

      Popular channel names include:

      • alpha: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugins/alpha/list

      • beta: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugins/beta/list

      • eap: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugins/eap/list

      More information about the available configuration options is in the documentation of the IntelliJ Gradle Plugin.

      Last modified: 08 August 2023