VCS integration with issue trackers

Last modified: 10 June 2021

With IntelliJ IDEA, you can connect your commit messages with a bug tracker or an issues data base, and navigate from commits in your VCS log to issues related to these commits.

Enable navigation from commit messages to issues

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open IDE settings and select Version Control | Issue Navigation.

  2. Configure a list of issue navigation patterns by mapping issue patterns in commit messages with URL addresses of the referenced issues.

    • If you are using JIRA or YouTrack, click Add JIRA pattern   Icons toolbar decorator add jira or Add YouTrack Pattern Icons toolbar decorator add you track on the toolbar, and type the URL to the installation of the bug tracking system.
      IntelliJ IDEA will automatically add a regular expression that defines the navigation pattern.

    • For other issue tracking systems, click the Add button Icons general add to create a new entry or select an existing entry and click the Edit button. In the Add Issue Navigation Link dialog that opens, specify the following:

      • The regular expression that defines the issue pattern in a commit message.

      • The replacement expression that defines the URL to access the corresponding referenced issue.

Example

Issue ID pattern

The regular expression that defines the format in which issues are referenced in commit messages.

[A-Z]+\-\d+

This regular expressions matches all character strings that consist of two substrings separated by an n-dash character:

  1. Substring 1: An unlimited number of upper case alphabetic characters.

  2. Substring 2: An unlimited number of digital characters.

Issue link pattern

A combination of the URL address of your issue tracking system and a regular expression that identifies issues in it.

http://mytracker/issue/$0

Here $0 indicates a back reference to the entire match. This means that as soon as IntelliJ IDEA detects a match in a commit message, it is added to the URL address of the tracker as is.

Matching issue ID

IntelliJ IDEA detects the following reference to an issue in the commit message of interest: 

MYPROJECT-110

Composed issue link

In accordance with the above issue navigation pattern, the detected matching reference is added to the URL of the tracker as is, so the link to the referenced issue is composed as follows: 

http://mytracker/issue/MYPROJECT-110

See also

Reference