juhoautio / intellijideasettingsupdater

A python script that modifies the maven import settings in IntelliJ IDEA's workspace.xml

Intellij Idea Settings Updater

A python script that modifies the maven import settings in IntelliJ IDEA's workspace.xml

It ensures that the following Maven Import preferences are set:

  <component name="MavenImportPreferences">
    <option name="importingSettings">
      <MavenImportingSettings>
        <option name="downloadDocsAutomatically" value="true" />
        <option name="downloadSourcesAutomatically" value="true" />
        <option name="importAutomatically" value="true" />
      </MavenImportingSettings>
    </option>
  </component>

If the element exists previously, it is updated. However, if it previously contains any other options than importAutomatically, the script doesn't modify the file.

Usage? just run

python updater.py --help

Usage examples

You have two IDEA projects in a directory called IdeaProjects. They have the following workspace.xml settings files:

~/IdeaProjects/importAutomatically/.idea/workspace.xml
~/IdeaProjects/no_maven_settings/.idea/workspace.xml

To update the maven import settings for these projects, run the following command:

python updater.py -d ~/IdeaProjects

Or you can manually tell which files to update:

python updater.py ~/IdeaProjects/importAutomatically/.idea/workspace.xml ~/IdeaProjects/no_maven_settings/.idea/workspace.\
xml

Safety

A backup is always created before modifying the original file (workspace.xml-bak). In case you need to revert the changes..

Future work

• Making the script generic so that other settings changes can be requested with a simple syntax
  • for example:

python updater.py --set-value component[@name='MavenImportPreferences']/option[@name='importingSettings']/MavenImportingSe\
ttings/option/[@name='downloadDocsAutomatically']/value=true

• or for example a specialized feature for setting options, something like this:

python updater.py --set-option MavenImportPreferences/importingSettings/MavenImportingSettings/option/downloadDocsAutomati\
cally=true

• Improving the unit test & script structure
• Change tests like if not maven to future-proof, for example this:

python updater.py:93: FutureWarning: The behavior of this method will change in future versions.  Use specific 'len(elem)'\
or 'elem is not None' test instead.
  if not maven: