Apache Grails IntelliJ Plugin

IntelliJ IDEA plugin for the Apache Grails framework: GSP language support (parsing, highlighting, completion, refactoring), Grails project structure and navigation, run configurations, taglib/domain-class support, and integrations for i18n, coverage, Hibernate, Maven, and language injection.

The Grails project view pane gives grails-app/ dedicated Stylesheets, Images, JavaScripts, Migrations, Translations and Utils nodes, and lifts the test source roots out of src as Tests:unit, Tests:integration and Tests:functional. You can add your own folders to the Grails view, such as docs/, .github/, build/, or a notes directory elsewhere on disk. Configure them under Settings ▸ Languages & Frameworks ▸ Grails: as global defaults, as this project‘s folders, or both. You can also right-click a directory and choose Add Custom Folder to Grails View. A relative path is resolved against the Grails application root; an absolute path, or one starting with ~, can point anywhere, including outside the project. Folders appear below the test nodes in the order they are listed, this project’s first. Six render by default, and the limit can be changed on the same page.

The plugin runs on IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and, with a reduced feature set, on IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 2026.2+ (see CE-SUPPORT.md).

This codebase was originally developed by JetBrains s.r.o. and donated to the Apache Software Foundation under a software grant. It was imported from the grails directory of JetBrains/intellij-obsolete-plugins at commit dfe54ea (tree a8bd06f), the last commit to touch that directory upstream.

Requirements

To run the plugin:

• IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate 2026.2.2+ (sinceBuild 262.10315.125) for the full feature set, or IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 2026.2+ for the reduced one. The plugin loads on Community: every Ultimate-only integration lives in a content module that the platform skips when its dependencies are absent, so the main jar compiles against the Community API only. See CE-SUPPORT.md for exactly which features are missing.

To build the plugin:

The build needs network access to Maven Central and the JetBrains IntelliJ Platform repositories. The grails-rt, grails-compiler-patch, and jps-plugin modules target older bytecode levels (Java 8/11) but still build with the JDK above.

Building from source

These steps take you from an empty machine to an installable plugin ZIP. They cover a clone of this repository; if you are starting from a released source distribution instead, see INSTALL — the only difference is that step 3 is mandatory there.

1. Get the source

git clone https://github.com/apache/grails-intellij-plugin.git
cd grails-intellij-plugin

2. Install the JDK and Gradle

The required versions are pinned in .sdkmanrc. The simplest way to get exactly those versions is SDKMAN!:

curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash     # if SDKMAN! is not installed yet
source "$HOME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

sdk env install    # reads .sdkmanrc, installs the pinned JDK + Gradle
sdk env            # selects them for the current shell

If you would rather not use SDKMAN!, install the same versions by any means you prefer — for example download Liberica JDK 25 and Gradle 9.8.0 manually — then make sure java -version and gradle --version report them:

export JAVA_HOME=/path/to/liberica-jdk-25
export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:/path/to/gradle-9.8.0/bin:$PATH"

Building with a different JDK will usually work, but the artifacts will not be bit-for-bit reproducible against an official release.

3. Bootstrap the Gradle Wrapper

From a git clone this step is not needed — gradlew and the wrapper jar are checked in, so skip straight to step 4.

From a source distribution it is required. ASF source releases may not contain compiled binaries, so the wrapper jar is stripped out and must be regenerated once using the local Gradle from step 2:

cd gradle-bootstrap
gradle bootstrap
cd ..

gradle-bootstrap is a tiny standalone Gradle build whose only job is to run the wrapper task at the version named in .sdkmanrc and copy the results (gradlew, gradlew.bat, gradle/wrapper/) up to the source root. After it runs, use ./gradlew for everything below.

4. Build the plugin

./gradlew buildPlugin

The plugin ZIP is written to plugin/build/distributions/ and can be installed in IntelliJ IDEA via Settings > Plugins > ⚙ > Install Plugin from Disk.

The first build downloads the IntelliJ Platform (IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate) and the bundled plugins it compiles against. Expect it to take a while and pull down several GB; subsequent builds reuse the .intellijPlatform cache.

To build a specific version rather than the default in gradle.properties:

./gradlew buildPlugin -Pversion=262.0.1

5. Verify the build (optional)

./gradlew check                  # compile and run the test suite
./gradlew verifyPlugin           # IntelliJ Plugin Verifier
./gradlew rat                    # Apache RAT license audit
./gradlew runIde                 # launch a sandbox IDE with the plugin installed
./gradlew testCodeCoverageReport # aggregate JaCoCo coverage report
./gradlew vulnerabilityScan vulnerabilityScanReport --continue
                                 # dependency vulnerability scan against OSV (and Sonatype Guide when
                                 # SONATYPE_GUIDE_USERNAME/SONATYPE_GUIDE_TOKEN are set), summarised in
                                 # build/reports/vulnerability-scan/summary.md
./gradlew :plugin:sbom           # the CycloneDX SBOM that ships in the plugin ZIP

To confirm the build is reproducible, see RELEASE.md.

Releasing

The release process, artifact verification, and reproducibility requirements are documented in RELEASE.md.

Links

• Apache Grails
• Issue tracker
• Mailing lists

License

Apache License, Version 2.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE.