JetBrains issues trio of developer tools: Code With Me, IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1 and RubyMine 2021.1

JetBrains issues trio of developer tools: Code With Me, IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1 and RubyMine 2021.1

JetBrains has released a service to enable collaborative development through its integrated development environments (IDEs), an updated version of its IntelliJ IDEA Java developer environment, and officially made available RubyMine 2021.1, a full-featured development platform for Ruby and Rails.

The collaborative development capability comes with the public launch of the Code With Me service, which allows developers to invite guests into their IDE to enable collaborative development and pair programming across the majority of JetBrains IDEs, the firm said.

Code With Me has been designed to make collaborating a smoother experience, with support for audio/video and chats, as well as all key IDE features such as auto-completion, smart navigation, debugging, and even terminal access for guests. It provides the tools for developers to jointly issues, review code, do pair programming, and effectively collaborate in real-time, according to JetBrains.

The Code With Me service has been made available under three plans. The community plan is free of charge and supports an unlimited number of 30-min collaborative sessions with up to three guests. The Premium plan is for anyone with an active subscription to a JetBrains IDE and allows unlimited session length. The third plan, Enterprise, is an on-premises solution for organisations that require extra-security and control over their data.

JetBrains also released an updated version of its Java developer environment, IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1. This was apparently intended to focus on quality improvements, but adds new features in addition to fixing bugs.

Among these is integration with JetBrains Space, the firm’s collaboration platform for messaging and project management. This makes it possible to access project repositories and collaborate with teammates on code improvements inside these projects right from the IDE.

This version also adds support for Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which many developers have adopted for project work.  The IDE still runs on Windows, but will detect and use the JDK in WSL to compile and run a developer’s Maven or Gradle projects located in WSL. Projects that use the IntelliJ IDEA build system are also supported.

The new Run Targets feature enables developers to run, test, and debug applications remotely without leaving IntelliJ IDEA. The chief motivation behind this is to better support scenarios where workloads are running in Docker containers rather than in the local environment. IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate allows users to run Java applications, including Maven, Gradle, Spring Boot, Micronaut, and Maven-based Quarkus projects, as well as JUnit tests on Docker, SSH, and WSL targets.

In IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1, the Code With Me service is also available, supporting embedded audio and video calls, along with chat messaging out of the box.

RubyMine 2021.1 is the latest build of the IDE intended to streamline the process of development for the Ruby on Rails web application framework.

According to JetBrains, it features a built-in debugger, tools for build automation, testing, refactoring, version control system integration, and database management. RubyMine also helps developers with extensive code assistance and tools to analyse and complete code with suggestions based on the context.

RubyMine 2021.1 adds support for RBS, a language to describe the structure of Ruby programs that was introduced in Ruby 3.0 last year. This means drastically improved code completion, among other things, according to RubyMine product marketing manager Natalia Kudinova.

“The addition of RBS brings advantages of a statically typed language, which are great for larger projects. For example, having types makes it easier to detect bugs, and the IDEs can provide better code assistance,” she says.