Besides working from within IntelliJ IDEA, it is possible to perform certain actions "offline", without actually launching the IDE. This way you can:

To launch code inspection from the command line
  1. Under the bin directory of your IntelliJ IDEA installation, use one of the following launchers, depending on the operating system:
    • For Windows:inspect.bat
    • For UNIX and Mac:inspect.sh
  2. Specify command line arguments:
    • Project file path is the path to the *.ipr file or .idea directory of the project to be inspected.
    • Inspection profile path is the path to the profile, against which the project should be inspected. The inspection profiles are stored under USER_HOME\.IntelliJ IDEAXX\config\inspection
    • Output path is the path to the xml file, where the results report will be stored.
    • Options: you can specify the directory to be inspected -d <directory> and the verbosity level of output -vX, where X is 0 for quiet, 1 for noisy and 2 for extra noisy.

Examples

Windows

inspect.bat C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter Default.xml results-dir -v2

MacOS

/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/bin/inspect.sh ~/IdeaProjects/MyTestProject ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJ IDEA/inspection/Default.xml results-dir -v2
To view differences using command line diff tool
  • In the command line, type the following:
                        <IntelliJ IDEA> diff <path1> <path2>
                    
    where:
    • <IntelliJ IDEA> is platform-specific product launcher
    • <path1>, <path2> are full paths to the files to be compared.

Examples

Windows

            IntelliJ IDEA.exe diff C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\src\javascript\numbers.js C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\src\coffeescript\numbers.coffee
        

MacOS

            /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/MacOS/idea diff ~/Documents/file1.txt ~/Documents/file2.txt
To open file for editing
  • In the command line, type the following:
                        <IntelliJ IDEA> <path1> --line<number> <path1>
                    
    where:
    • <IntelliJ IDEA> is platform-specific product launcher
    • <path1> is the path to the project that contains the desired file
    • <number> is the number of the line, where the caret should rest
    • <path2> is the path to the file to be opened

Examples

Windows

            IntelliJ IDEA.exe C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter --line 3 C:\SamplesProjects\MetersToInchesConverter\src\javascript\numbers.js
        

MacOS

            /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/ ~/IdeaProjects/MyTestProject --line 3 ~/IdeaProjects/MyTestProject/file1.txt
        

See Also

Procedures:

Reference:

Web Resources: