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External tools

Last modified: 22 November 2024

Configure third-party command-line applications as external tools to run them from IntelliJ IDEA. For example, your workflow may require running a specific script, code generator, analyzer, preprocessor or postprocessor, some database utility, and so on. By configuring it as an external tool, IntelliJ IDEA provides a dedicated action for it, which you can run from the main menu, from certain context menus, assign a shortcut to it, or run it when launching a specific run configuration.

You can use built-in IDE macros to pass context-dependent command-line arguments to the tool, such as the current file or your project source path. If necessary, IntelliJ IDEA will print the tool's output to the console.

IntelliJ IDEA supports the following types of external tools:

  • Local tools run locally on your computer.

  • Remote tools are executed on a remote server over SSH.

    note

    You can add and run remote tools only in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate.