The ant build.xml requires a build.properties file that must be created with the
following properties, set appropriately for your environment.
idea.dir=$IDEA_HOME
plugin.dir=$HOME/config/plugins
jdk.dir=$JAVA_HOME
With these properties set appropriately, the "all" target will build and install the plugin, which will be active after restarting intellij (but see the LOGGING section below before restarting).
The plugin.dir is separated out as plugins may be installed on a per-user basis in their local configuration directories.
On OSX the build.properties file looks like:
idea.dir=/Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA\ 14.app/Contents
plugin.dir=/Users/derek/Library/Application Support/IntelliJIdea14
jdk.dir=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_25.jdk/Contents/Home
IntelliJ uses log4j internally which is rather convenient for logging things from plugins under development!
Logging is configured in $IDEA_HOME/bin/log.xml using the log4j xml configuration.
Log files are written to the IntelliJ $SYSTEM_DIR/log/idea.log[.n]
The $IDEA_HOME/bin/idea.lax file might indicate where the SYSTEM_DIR is.
Adding the following to the log.xml configuration file will configure log4j to log messages from the xfiles plugin to the xfiles.log file in the system log dir.
<appender name="XFILES" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender">
<param name="File" value="$LOG_DIR$/xfiles.log"/>
<param name="MaxFileSize" value="1Mb"/>
<param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="3"/>
<layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
<param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d [%7r] %6p - %30.30c - %m \n"/>
</layout>
</appender>
<category name="com.echologic.xfiles">
<appender-ref ref="XFILES"/>
<priority value="DEBUG"/>
</category>
On my setup, the log4j.xml configuration seems to use ' \n' to end message lines but this looks like a bug. Standard log4j configuration uses %n to issue a platform specific line ending. Also, the PatternLayout above is different than the one intellij's configuration uses. Set it to something that makes you happy.