Intellij IDEA key map for Eclipse

Eclipse and IDEA logo

It is not the least easy to switch to Eclipse after years of addiction to Intellij IDEA. IDEA is the best IDE I have worked with until now and will continue to remain that way until there is another visionary who attempts to improve the developer pleasure instead of just technical modularity. Eclipse may (or may not) have a better architecture, better design, better modularity, incomparable number of plug-ins and better written code than IDEA, but that doesn’t seem to attract the end developers like me.

I just love IDEA for the way it understands me, knows what I am trying to do at any moment and most importantly for the complete integrated development experience it gives. That doesn’t mean that Eclipse is not famous. Eclipse is very famous and many people love it too. But I think it is because it is free and more so because every other software vendor creates plug-ins for eclipse and that level of community support is not there for Netbeans or IDEA.

Anyways, recently when I had to switch to Eclipse for a few months for one particular development project, I was not a happy camper. I wanted to bring at least some level of IDEA like familiarity into Eclipse and with a happy accident I was able to get to the IDEA key scheme for Eclipse. I sincerely thank Santhosh for having created an Eclipse plug-in for that. It works as advertisied except for a very few gotchas.

To create an IDEA key scheme for your Eclipse Helios installation, download the plug-in from here. Drop the downloaded jar file into $ECLIPSE_HOME\plugins folder and restart Eclipse. Then goto Window -> Preferences -> General -> Keys and modify the scheme drop-down to change it from “Default” to “Intellij IDEA”. Click Apply and OK and you are done. Every key combination like Ctrl+N, Ctrl+Shift+N, Alt+F7, Shift+F6, Ctrl+F12, Ctrl+Shift+-, etc should work as expected.

It did not give me THE COMPLETE IDEA experience but I guess this is the best I could get for now. If anyone has any suggestions for a better IDEA experience please do share them in the comments section. I most definitely will be grateful.

 
 
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Ganeshji Marwaha

I spend my days as the Director of Technology for Mobility practice and help my clients design enterprise and consumer mobile strategies. Mobile Payments, Digital Wallet and Tokenization technologies are my areas of specialization
  • tunggad

    I totally agree with you. All the time working with IDEA one has the surprising feelings “wooaaww, you also do that for me”, its very smart.

    I will have to switch to Eclipse at next job too, because the organization want all the teamsmember should having the same environment, the same problems and of course the same solutions for the whole team.

  • Anish Abraham

    It is really good that have such a plugin, I was working with eclipse for the last few years, now I like to change my IDE to idea,
    is there is any plugin like eclipse have.

  • you looks die hard fan of IDEA, I have used Eclipse and Netbeans and found Eclipse more suitable for core java programs most for eclipse remote debugging feature and Netbeans for Mobile development due to integrated WTK. I want to give at least a try to IDEA sometime because I have seen some of fans like you in my vicinity as well 🙂

  • you looks die hard fan of IDEA, I have used Eclipse and Netbeans and found Eclipse more suitable for core java programs most for eclipse remote debugging feature and Netbeans for Mobile development due to integrated WTK. I want to give at least a try to IDEA sometime because I have seen some of fans like you in my vicinity as well 🙂

    Thanks
    Top 10 tips on logging in Java

  • Ganeshji Marwaha

    @tunggad – absolutely. I have felt that way when IDEA intentions simplifies my code and makes it a one liner.

    @Anish Abraham – I am sure there is one. But you will have to look around. If there isn’t one, I suggest you take time to create one…

    @Javin – I sure am a die hard fan of IDEA. Try it out with an open mind for one month and you are sure to become an evangelizer as well

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  • nilesh

    I am going through same hellish experience but in a reverse way. I have been eclipse user for years and having to use IDEA now. I don’t like it a bit. Problem I think, is not IDEA. It’s my mindset. My hands are used to hitting certain keys, my brain is programmed to do things in a certain ways and many things just happen without really having to think. Many of the IDEA shortcuts don’t make sense to me and feel quite silly and unintuitive.
    IDEA is as good a product as Eclipse if not better. (both probably have advantages and disadvantages) But to like IDEA, I am gonna have to unlearn eclipse first. I am sure I will eventually get used to it and like it equally.
    To me, your problem seems to arise from the fact that you tried to make eclipse think and work like IDEA. That’s foolish to me. If you ever have to work on eclipse again, try to unlearn IDEA and embrasse eclipse with open mind and you might as well like it.

  • thank you.

  • Remus

    Thanks for the “tutorial”. Helped a lot

  • Kruzag

    Man,

    Don’t even jump into discussion about Eclipse and IDEA. I think both products named self-speaking.

    Thanks for the plugin! Have to use Eclipse for money, so feel myself like a whore.