IntelliJ IDEA 15 EAP is Open

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At JetBrains we love traditions, those little things that make development more fun. The Early Access Program is one of them: it lets us share with you what we’re working on and get your feedback about the new features from early stages onwards. Today we’re happy to officially open IntelliJ IDEA 15 EAP!

Once you’ve downloaded the latest EAP build (from its official page), you’ll start getting updates with new features every several weeks (to receive notifications about updates, make sure to set Settings → Appearance & Behavior → System Settings → Updates → Automatically check updates for to “Early Access Program”). Your feedback is very appreciated in our issue tracker and the EAP forum.

Despite the fact that work on IntelliJ IDEA 15 has just started, a bunch of goodies is already available for you to take a look at.

Debugger: Stopping at Lambda Expressions

As more and more people migrate to Java 8 we keep making the IDE more friendly to it. Now when you use Step Into or Run to Cursor, the IDE stops at the corresponding lambda expression:

If the line you’re adding a breakpoint to has a lambda expression, the IDE asks you where exactly you’d like to stop.

Code Formatter: Adjusting Settings via a Quick-Fix

To make configuring code style settings easier for you, we have added a new quick fix called Adjust code style settings. This quick fix becomes available when you select a piece of code in the editor. When you apply it, the quick fix offers you to change the code style settings that affect the selected code, with live preview. This way of configuring code style settings is more convenient than getting through the whole list of settings:

Version Control: Editing Code in Diff Viewer

Another enhancement you may find very handy is editing capabilities in the Diff Viewer. Now if you want to make a quick edit, there’s no need to switch to the editor anymore:

Editing works in both the Two-sided and One-sided Diff Viewers.

Version Control: Mercurial Queues

If you use Mercurial Queues, you’ll be glad to know that the IDE now provides dedicated tools for managing patches. It lets you create patches; import local commit as patches; rename, apply, unapply and remove them:

Running Applications via Gutter Icon

Now you can set up a Run/Debug configuration for any class (that has a main method) and launch it with just one click:

Find in Path: Preview Pane

To make the Find in Path action more responsive, we’ve added the Preview tab: it shows the first 100 results in realtime. Now to find what you need, you don’t even have to leave the dialog:

Web Development: Polymer 1.0, AngularJS 2.0 and TypeScript 1.5

Web developers will be glad to give a try to the initial support for Polymer 1.0 and AngularJS 2.0; TSLint; and better support for TypeScript 1.5.

Database Tools: Grouping Objects in Tool Window

The updated Database tool window lets you group schema objects (tables, views, sequences, etc) and table contents (columns, indexes, keys, foreign keys, etc):

Database Tools: New Data Sources and Drivers Dialog

The Data Sources and Drivers dialog has been also updated for better experience:

OS X and Java Version

And last but not the least, OS X users may notice that we don’t offer the .dmg installer that requires Java 6 anymore. Now our .dmg installer comes with a patched JDK 8. It means two things: a) you don’t need to have Java 6 installed to run the IDE; b) it is able to work with Java 6 or higher. To make it easier for you to switch between versions (in case you have such a need), you can do it via the dedicated action Switch IDE boot JDK available via Find Action:

More details on these and many other new features are to come. Download the preview and stay tuned for updates to stay on the cutting edge.

Don’t forget to write us back in our discussion forum and issue tracker.

UPDATE: IntelliJ IDEA 15 Preview is available. Learn more…

Develop with Pleasure!