IntelliJ Platform 2020 Roadmap: Faster Indexing, Plugin Hot‑Swap & Cloud Support

JetBrains published its 2020 IntelliJ Platform roadmap, detailing upcoming improvements to IntelliJ IDEA and other IDEs built on the platform.

Performance

The roadmap targets two main pain points: startup speed and long indexing times. JetBrains plans to introduce pre‑built index chunks, allowing each IntelliJ instance to skip re‑indexing of standard library classes such as java.lang.String. Support will roll out gradually, starting with the JDK, then Maven Central libraries, and eventually other interpreter packages. Additional UI‑driven indexing actions will reduce destructive indexing, and the IDE will notify users about problematic files that cause excessive indexing time or frequent rebuilds. Legacy performance optimisations will also be applied to eliminate unnecessary work.

Read/Write Lock Thread Model Redesign

UI freezes caused by operations that require write locks will be moved off the UI thread. JetBrains will refactor core UI components and APIs to adopt a new thread model, enabling background execution of large operations while keeping the UI responsive.

No‑Restart Plugin Load/Unload

A preview in IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 already allows installing themes and keymap plugins without restarting. The 2020.1 release will extend this capability to all plugin types, eventually allowing the IDE to load only the plugins required for a given project (e.g., Spring or Angular plugins).

Workflow Support

Collaborative Editing

Highly requested collaborative editing will let a “host” IDE run on a machine with the source code while other users connect as thin clients. Each client maintains its own state (open files, caret positions) and can follow another user. The feature will initially rely on the Rider protocol and may appear first in Rider before reaching other IDEs.

Cloud Execution

JetBrains introduces a “target environment” concept that can mirror files and launch processes in local machines, Docker containers, or remote hosts via SSH. Future releases will unify Docker and remote interpreter support and deepen cloud integration.

Project Model Redesign

The current project model, which works at the directory level, limits mixed‑type projects and fine‑grained dependency handling. The new “workspace model” will remove these constraints, improve project opening performance, streamline Maven/Gradle synchronization, and provide a better programming model.

For more details, see the official blog post: https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2019/12/intellij-platform-roadmap-for-2020