1. Getting started
  2. Manage plugins

Manage plugins

Last modified: 18 June 2020

Plugins extend the core functionality of MPS. They:

  • provide integration with version control systems, application servers, and other tools

  • add coding assistance support for various languages and frameworks

  • boost your productivity with shortcut hints, live previews, File Watchers, and so on

  • help you learn a new programming language with coding exercises and verification

Open plugin settings

  • In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, select Plugins.

The plugins settings dialog

Use the Marketplace tab to browse and install plugins from the JetBrains Plugin Repository or from a custom plugin repository.

Use the Installed tab to browse installed plugins, enable, disable, update, or remove them. Disabling unnecessary plugins can increase performance.

Most plugins can be used with any JetBrains product. Some are limited only to commercial products. There are also plugins that require a separate license.

If a plugin depends on some other plugin, MPS will notify you about the dependencies. If your project depends on certain plugins, add them to the list of required plugins.

If existing plugins do not provide some functionality that you need, you can create your own plugin for MPS. For more information, see Develop your own plugins.

By default, MPS includes a number of bundled plugins. You can disable bundled plugins, but they cannot be removed. You can install additional plugins from the plugin repository or from a local archive file (ZIP or JAR).

Install plugin from repository

Install plugin from disk

Remove plugin

Disable plugin

Custom plugin repositories

By default, MPS is configured to use plugins from the JetBrains Plugin Repository. This is where all the community plugins are hosted, and you are free to host your plugins there. However, if you develop plugins for internal use only, you can set up a custom plugin repository for them.

For information about setting up a custom plugin repository, see the IntelliJ Platform SDK documentation.

Once you set up your plugin repository, add it to MPS:

  1. In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, select Plugins.

  2. On the Plugins page, click The cogwheel icon and then click Manage Plugin Repositories.

  3. In the Custom Plugin Repositories dialog, click The Add icon and specify your repository URL. It must point to the location of the updatePlugins.xml file. The file can be on the same server as your custom plugins, or on a dedicated one.

    How to add a custom plugin repository

  4. Click OK in the Custom Plugin Repositories dialog to save the list of plugin repositories.

  5. Click OK in the Settings/Preferences dialog to apply the changes.

To browse the custom plugin repository, type repository: followed by the URL of the repository in the Marketplace tab of the Plugins page. For example:

Alternatively, you can replace the default JetBrains Plugin Repository with your custom repository URL. This can be helpful if you want only your custom repository plugins to be available from MPS. To do this, edit the platform properties or VM options file as described below. For more information, see Advanced configuration.

Use a custom plugin repository

If you replace the default plugin repository with a custom one, the search field on the Marketplace tab of the Plugins dialog will browse only the plugins in your custom repository.

Required plugins

A project may require plugins that provide support for certain technologies or frameworks. You can add such plugins to the list of required plugins for the current project, so that MPS will verify that the plugins are installed and enabled. It will notify you if you forget about some plugin, or someone on your team is not aware about the dependency as they work on the project.

Add a required plugin for your current project

  1. Make sure that the required plugin is installed.

  2. In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, select Build, Execution, Deployment | Required Plugins.

  3. On the Required Plugins page, click The Add icon and select the plugin. Optionally, specify the minimum and maximum version of the plugin.

    Add required plugin dialog

tip

To specify the required version of MPS itself, add IDE Core to the list of required plugins.

After the required plugin is added, when you open the project in MPS, it will notify you if the plugin is disabled, not installed, or requires an update.

Click the link in the notification message to quickly enable, install, or update the required plugin.

Develop your own plugins

You can use any edition of MPS to develop language plugins as well as standalone IDEs for your languages. For more information, see the Building MPS Language Plugins Guide