Discover 7 powerful ways to supercharge your version control with JetBrains AI Assistant!
From resolving tricky merge conflicts to generating precise commit messages, AI Assistant offers tools that can save you time and boost your productivity. Learn how to ask questions about your projectâs version control history, review local changes, and even customize commit prompts to fit your style. Whether youâre dealing with complex git commands or want help revisiting old commits, JetBrains AI Assistant has you covered.
Watch now to explore how you can transform your version control experience!
Struggling to understand complex code? JetBrains AI Assistant is here to help!
In this video, we walk you through practical examples of how the AI Assistant simplifies code comprehension. From summarizing projects and explaining classes to clarifying regex and runtime errors, this tool enhances your productivity and understanding. You’ll also learn how to use natural language queries, write concise documentation, and even dig into commit history with ease.
Whether you’re dealing with unfamiliar code or just need quick insights, JetBrains AI Assistant has you covered!
You want to perform an action in IntelliJ IDEA, like reformatting your code, but donât remember the shortcut. To find any action in IntelliJ IDEA, there is only one shortcut you need: Find Action! Press â§âA (on macOS) or Control+Shift+A (on Windows/Linux) to open the Find Action dialog.
Find Action
Next, search for the action you want to perform. Type as much as needed until the relevant action shows up in the list. Notice that the shortcuts for actions are also shown if there is one available. For example, we see that the shortcut for Reformat File is ââ„L (on macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+L (on Windows/Linux). Where relevant, the menu option is also shown. Use arrow keys to navigate the list, and enter to select the desired option.
We can also find and change settings in the Find Action popup. For example, letâs look for âtab placement.â Press enter on a selected setting to toggle it on or off. For example, set Tab Placement to None to turn off tabs, without having to open the Settings menu.
Tab Placement – None
We can still open the Settings menu directly using the shortcut â, (on macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+S (on Windows/Linux) if we want to. To quickly find the right settings, we can search for tab placement. Turn tabs back on by selecting Tab placement: Top (or Left, Bottom or Right, if you prefer any of those locations), and we can set a other related settings here.
Settings – Tab Placement
But we can open Settings from Find Action too. We can even go directly to specific settings, like those for tab placement.
Find Action – Tab Placement Settings
This can be useful because not all settings can be toggled. For example, we can search for âsoft-wrapâ to toggle it on or off, but if we want to specify which file types to soft-wrap, we can do so in the Settings.
Find Action – Soft-wrapSettings – Soft-wrap
Finally, we can open windows using Find Action, for example the Maven window. In this example, searching for âMavenâ gives us multiple results. If weâre unsure which one we need, we can look at the description of the action shown in the bottom of the Find Action dialog.
Find Action – Maven
We can also hide all tool windows again. Use speed typing to find options faster by typing just one, or a few letters of each word. For example, typing âh a wâ finds the option to Hide All Windows. This is especially useful if you know the name of the action youâre trying to find. But donât worry if you donât! You can still find the action you want by looking for any part of the name. For example, by searching for âwindowâ to find the option to Hide All Windows, or Hide Active Window.
Find Action – Speed typing
Now you have all actions in IntelliJ IDEA at your fingertips. Use Find Action to find any action.
When dependencies in your project have known vulnerabilities, how do you know whether you’re actually using the vulnerable part of a dependency? Use IntelliJ IDEA’s Vulnerable API Usages inspection to find out!
If you accidentally committed your code to the wrong branch, you don’t have to redo the work. IntelliJ IDEA offers a low-stress solution by allowing you to move your commit to a different branch using Git’s cherry-pick option.
As developers, we read code more than we write it. When adding new features or fixing bugs, we first need to understand existing code, so we can make the right changes in the right place.
When reading code inside the IDE, IntelliJ IDEA helps us to read and understand code by providing helpful features like syntax highlighting and inlay hints. But there are more features to help us understand a piece of code.
Formatting
We donât read code like we do text, from start to finish. Code doesnât run linearly! We scan code to get a feel for the shape, and to find the part weâre interested in.
IntelliJ IDEA will take care of formatting the code while weâre writing code. If we encounter code that is not properly formatted, we can have IntelliJ IDEA reformat the code for us. In the file you want to reformat, use the shortcut ââ„L on macOS or Ctrl+Alt+L on Windows/Linux.
Reformat code
We can restructure the code by moving code blocks around to match our mental model, preferred style or coding conventions.
Move Statement Up and Down
Structure
There are several ways to get a quick overview of a piece of code. For example, we can collapse the code, so we only see the names of methods and not their implementation. This can help us find the specific code we are looking for more quickly. We can then expand that particular section.
Collapse and Expand code
Note that we can still search the code when it is collapsed, and if needed the relevant section will expand.
Search collapsed code
Alternatively, we can look at the File Structure for a file using â F12 on macOS or Ctrl+F12 on Windows/Linux. We can navigate to the section of the code weâre interested in from here.
File Structure
We can get the same information by opening the Structure tool window, using â 7 on macOS or Alt+7 on Windows/Linux.
Structure tool window
Searching
We can search the code for specific names of variables, methods, or Strings, for example a log message. IntelliJ IDEA will highlight the results of your search in the file.
We can also search for other occurrences from the editor. For example, we can select this variable name, and press âF on macOS or Ctrl+F on Windows/Linux to search for the selected string. IntelliJ IDEA will place the selected string into the search field and highlight all occurrences in the file.
Find String in File
Additional hints: Quick Documentation & Type Information
We can also ask for additional hints from our IDE. For example, we might want more information about a particular class or method that is used in the code we are looking at, but defined elsewhere in the codebase. We can navigate to other locations in the code base, and back again, but we might end up getting lost in a large code base. Even though we can ask IntelliJ IDEA to locate a file in the project structure, jumping around too much can get overwhelming.
Select in: Project tool window
Instead, we can use Quick Documentation (F1 on macOS or Ctrl+Q on Windows/Linux) to pull up the information we need in our current location.
Quick Documentation
We can also pull up Type Information using ââ§P on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux if weâre unsure of what type is returned by a particular method.
Type Information
Reader mode
Code might contain comments that explain the code. We can toggle to reader mode in the editor using ^â„Q (on macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+Q (on Windows/Linux). Right-click the icon in the gutter to select Render All Doc Comments if you want all comments to show in reader mode.
Toggle rendered mode
Testing and debugging
To understand intended behavior of the code, we can look at the tests in the code base. To look at the code and its tests side by side, right-click the tab and select Split and Move Right.
Split and Move Right
We can run a test (or our application) through the debugger to actually see how the code is executed. First, we need to place a breakpoint at the location in the code weâre interested in. Click the gutter next to the line of code where you want to place the breakpoint, or use â F8 on macOS or Ctrl+F8 on Windows/Linux to toggle the breakpoint.
Next, we run our test (or application) using the Debug option. Execution will stop at the breakpoint, so we can investigate the state of our application. Once code execution stops at the breakpoint, we can see current values of variables and objects.
We can also evaluate an expression, to see its current value and look at more details. We can even change the expressions to evaluate different results.
Evaluate Expression
We can continue execution by either stepping into (F7) a line to see what happens inside a called method or stepping over (F8) a line to go to the next line even if a method is called, depending on what weâre interested in. Finally, we can resume the program, using the shortcut â„âR on macOS or F9 on Windows/Linux, to finish the execution of the test (or continue execution of the application).
Step into, step over, resume.
If there is no test that exercises the piece of code you are interested in, you might want to add one. This can also help you verify any assumptions you might have about the code.
Refactoring for understanding
While trying to understand the code, you may want to perform small refactorings, like renaming a variable or method (using the shortcut â§F6 on macOS or Shift+F6 on Windows/Linux), extracting a method and giving it a meaningful name (using the shortcut â„âM on macOS or Ctrl+Alt+M on Windows/Linux), or refactor the code to a style you are more familiar with to make it easier for you to read and understand the code.
Refactor code style
Playing with the code can help you verify your assumptions and improve your understanding. Remember though, that these changes are not meant to be committed! Revert them when youâre done.
Revert changes
Version control (Git) history
We might be interested in when the code was last changed and why. We can find out by looking at the history in our version control system. If we are using Git, we can click the gutter to enable Annotate with Git Blame. Or, if you donât like using the mouse, you can open the VCS Popup using âV on macOS or Alt+` on Windows/Linux and enable or disable this option from there.
VCS Popup
In the gutter, we can now see when a line was last changed and by whom. We can hover over this information to see the commit this change was a part of and its corresponding commit message. Or we can click a line in the gutter to open the Git tool window, with the selected commit highlighted. Here, we can see the commit, its commit message and which files were changed. We can open the diff of the files to see exactly what was changed.
JetBrains AI Assistant
If you are using JetBrains AI Assistant, you can ask AI Assistant to explain the commit to you.
Explain Commit
JetBrains AI Assistant is an additional service available in IntelliJ IDEA from version 2023.3. It has several features that can help us understand our code. For example, we can ask AI Assistant to explain code, write documentation, or generate unit tests.
AI Actions
If we use the AI action Explain code without selecting any code, the entire file is selected and AI Assistant opens a chat window where it will explain the code in this file. Alternatively, we can select a specific piece of code, like a method, and perform the same action to get an explanation of that section of code.
Explain Code
We can write documentation for a class or method. Note that our cursor needs to be in the class or method for this to work. We canât write documentation for a blank line.
Write Documentation
And of course, we can ask AI Assistant questions in the chat. For example, to explain the project.
Explain Project
Keep in mind that even if you use AI Assistant to write code for you, youâll still need to be able to read code! Youâll need to evaluate the code provided, and understand whether that is the code you want.
Conclusion
In this tutorial weâve looked at the many ways IntelliJ IDEA can help you read and understand code. Hopefully these tips for reading code will have you reading code like a pro.
As developers, we spend more time reading code than writing it, and this video provides tips to enhance your code-reading skills within the IntelliJ IDEA IDE. Learn how to leverage features like syntax highlighting, inlay hints, and code formatting to navigate and understand code effortlessly. Discover techniques to quickly scan code, collapse and expand sections for efficient navigation, and use powerful search functionalities to locate specific elements.
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, these tips will empower you to read and comprehend code with confidence, making your coding journey in IntelliJ IDEA a seamless and productive experience.
Sometimes you’re making multiple changes to a file that you don’t want to commit together. For example, if you’re working on a new feature, but notice some other small things you want to fix. If these changes are in separate files, we can commit each file separately. But what if theyâre in the same file?
In IntelliJ IDEA (as of version 2023.3), we can now select which chunks and specific lines we want to add to our commit.
We can see which files were changed by opening the Commit tool window (â0 on macOS, or Alt+0 on Windows/Linux). Here we can open the diff for a particular file to see which changes were made to that file, using âD (macOS) / Ctrl+D (Windows/Linux).
In the diff, we have the option to include specific changes to our commit, by clicking the Include into commit checkbox in the gutter next to each chunk of modified, deleted or newly added code.
We can even select specific lines from a change to include in a commit. To commit only a specific line from a chunk, right-click the line you want to include and select Split Chunk and Include Current Line into Commit.
Alternatively, hover over the gutter and select the checkbox next to the line you want to include in the commit. Or, if we change our mind, we can also hover over the gutter and clear the checkbox next to the line we want to exclude.
Once we have selected all the changes we want to commit, we write a meaningful commit message, and select Commit. Any unselected changes will stay in the current change list, so that you can commit them separately later.
What if we donât want to add these changes to the same pull request, not even in a separate commit? Maybe you want to do some more cleaning up in your code base, and create a separate pull request for those changes later. We can undo this commit and move these changes to a different change list. To do so, select Move to Another Changelist from the context menu of a modified chunk.
Next, we can name our new changelist. The changes will be assigned to this changelist and we can see it in the Commit tool window.
While working on a new feature, you find some small other things to fix. Since these changes are unrelated, you probably shouldnât commit them together. You could revert these changes to redo them separately, but who wants to do extra work? Fortunately, you can now select which chunks or even lines of changes to add to your commit. You can commit the rest separately or even move it to a new change list.
