Mike Slinn
ScalaCourses.com

JetBrains Toolbox

— Draft —

Published 2019-04-20. Last modified 2019-06-18.
Time to read: 6 minutes.

It is hard to keep up with JetBrains! Just after this lecture was published, JetBrains Toolbox 1.5 was released, with automatic plugins updating and new browser extensions for GitLab and BitBucket.

To reiterate, you have 3 broad choices for running Scala. You can choose all of them or only one of them.

  1. The optional Installing Scala Only lecture discussed how to install the standalone Scala compiler, and a Java development kit to power it.
  2. The SBT Global Setup lecture showed you how to install SBT, which can be used to compile, test and and run Scala projects. Although you can do all your work in IDEA, if you intend to work with Scala at all you should install SBT and know how to work with it. The SBT Project Setup and SBT Tasks and Settings lectures explain SBT.
  3. This lecture and the following Setting Up IntelliJ IDEA and Working With IntelliJ IDEA lectures are for programmers who would like to set up IntelliJ IDEA for use with this course and those that follow. These 3 lectures detail how to install and configure IntelliJ IDEA by JetBrains for use with Scala and SBT, and discuss special considerations for Mac OS/X, Linux and Windows, as well as Eclipse / Scala IDE compatibility. Although these 3 lectures are optional, most Scala programmers use IntelliJ IDEA by JetBrains, so most students should work through these lectures. IDEA installs its own versions of the Scala compiler and SBT, based on the project settings you establish.

A word about the Scala compiler – scalac has been packaged many ways, and IntelliJ IDEA by JetBrains has supported most of them at one time or another. Regardless of how scalac is packaged, it needs a lot more memory than the Java compiler. These lectures are intended to guide you through the most appropriate way of configuring IDEA for working with Scala.

This material was originally produced with IDEA 12.1.3 and was updated to IDEA 13.1.3, IDEA 14.1.4, IDEA15.0.3, IDEA 16.4, IDEA 2017.1 and IDEA 2019.1.3. If you have a version other than IDEA 2019.1.3 then portions of these lectures will not correspond to what you see on your screen.

Installing IDEA Without JetBrains Toolbox

JetBrains toolbox should not be installed on WSL. When WSL2 is released JetBrains Toolbox should work fine. If you are using WSL please skip to the next lecture, Setting Up IntelliJ IDEA.

If you are unsure if you really want the JetBrains Toolbox app, download and run the appropriate IntelliJ IDEA 2019 installation package now instead. IDEA can be used to work with the projects provided with this course, and you should download it now in order to work through the remainder of this course. JetBrains offers a 30 day trial for IDEA Ultimate, but the free version should also work for Scala projects. You need the Ultimate edition of IDEA in order to work with Play Framework. If you opt for not installing JetBrains Toolbox, install IDEA now and skip to the next lecture, Setting Up IntelliJ IDEA.

Installing JavaFX

Most users should not need to install JavaFX because we recommended that OpenJDK 8 be installed in the Installing Scala Only lecture.

IntelliJ needs JavaFX, which was no longer included in Java starting with Java 11. This is not a problem for Windows or MacOS, but Ubuntu and WSL programmers who use JDK 11+ will need to install JavaFX manually before installing IDEA.

Shell
$ sudo apt install openjfx

About JetBrains Toolbox

You can either install IntelliJ IDEA directly, or you can install JetBrains Toolbox App, which manages IDEA for you.

  • JetBrains Toolbox is free.
  • Located at the top right Linux menu, or in the Windows system tray.
  • Applies updates automatically to all installed JetBrains products - including IDEA.
  • Offers a Google Chrome extension and a Firefox Add-on so you can check out GitHub projects and open them in IDEA in one click.
  • Downloads updates as a patch (or a set of patches) instead of the full package download, thus saving time & bandwidth.
  • Remembers your JetBrains Account and uses it to automatically log you into other tools you install.
  • Shows all your projects in one list with your favorites at the top. Open any project in one click inside the right IDE, and in its right version if you have several installed. Even if you use a single IDE and have multiple projects, you’ll save clicks opening them from Toolbox App.
  • Makes handling several versions of IDEA easy and painless. No more worries about where to install or how to remove it. Toolbox supports Early Access products too.

The next section details how to install JetBrains Toolbox, and the section after that discusses how to install just IDEA without JetBrains Toolbox.

Installing JetBrains Toolbox

Download the JetBrains Toolbox App installer for your computer’s operating system and run it.

MacOS

JetBrains Toolbox is delivered as a .dmg for MacOS. Click on the cube image and drag it on top of the blue folder image to install.

Linux

If you are running a Linux installation the program is provided as a .tgz file, which should be decompressed into a directory of your choice such as /opt. For example, if you downloaded into ~/Downloads, you might type.

Shell
$ cd /opt

$ tar zxf ~/Downloads/jetbrains-toolbox-1.14.5179.tar.gz

This would give you a directory called /opt/jetbrains-toolbox-1.14.5179, and you could run the program by typing:

Shell
$ /opt/jetbrains-toolbox-1.14.5179/jetbrains-toolbox &

Windows

WSL users could install the Linux version of JetBrains Toolbox, if they are in the habit of using a Linux desktop. This will become a reasonable option when WSL 2 becomes available, but WSL 1 users will find that accessing a Linux desktop from Windows to be aggravatingly slow.

Native Windows users can install JetBrains Toolbox easily, like this:

  1. Windows users run the installer.
  2. Components are extracted and installed automagically as you would expect.
  3. Nothing to it! The program will run when you click the Finish button after installation completes.

Running JetBrains Toolbox

Toolbox appears in different ways for different OSes. We will explore those in a moment.

You are required to accept the EULA the first time you run the program.

The main JetBrains Toolbox window looks similar on MacOS, Windows and Linux. If Toolbox finds a previous installation of a JetBrains product, such as IDEA, the products can be updated easily or automatically, depending on settings.

MacOS

When installed the JetBrains Toolbox menu icon appears as a black-and-white cube on the top menu (it is on the very left):

Clicking on the top right hexagon icon brings up the JetBrains Toolbox App Settings menu.

Here is how I configured the app for MacOS:

Linux

Clicking on the red/orange menu icon at the top right of the screen displays a menu.

Select the Settings entry and you will be able to configure JetBrains Toolbox.

Windows

Toolbox appears at the lower right of your screen. I had forgotten about an old version of IDEA 2018.2.1, so I clicked the Uninstall button after it updated. Thanks, Toolbox!

If you do not see the red cube in the system tray, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on the taskbar at the bottom of your screen and select Taskbar Settings.
  2. Scroll down to the Notification Area and click on Select which icons appear on the taskbar.
  3. Scroll down to the JetBrains Toolbox entry and make its icon visible.
  4. Close the Windows settings dialog box.

All OSes

  1. The small hexagonal icon to the right of every installed product allows you to modify the settings, roll back to an earlier version, or uninstall it.
  2. I deleted my older version of IntelliJ IDEA by clicking the Uninstall button to the right. This button duplicates the functionality of the Uninstall menu item in the previous step.
  3. The uninstaller reported that a different product was being deleted, in an unexpected directory. I left the configuration directory in place by not checking any boxes, and clicked Uninstall. That way I could reinstall IDEA as before if necessary without losing any setup configuration.
  4. I clicked on IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate to launch IDEA 2019.1.1.
  5. IDEA 2019.1.1 launched fine from Toolbox when I clicked on it because I had previously configured IDEA. First-time users will be presented with a sequence of configuration dialogs instead, which we will look at in the next lecture, Setting Up IntelliJ IDEA.

JetBrains Toolbox Browser Support

Install the JetBrains Toolbox browser support for Google Chrome and/or Firefox

We will discuss how the Toolbox browser support work in the Web Browser / GitHub / JetBrains Toolbox Integration section of the Working With IntelliJ IDEA lecture.

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