Install IntelliJ Community Edition

If you are already using Eclipse as IDE for many years, then you may skip this page. However I would strongly recommend to use IntelliJ as it would give you the best experience with Cucumber JVM

Context

If you have worked with RubyMine using Cucumber in Ruby world [in fact all Ruby cucumber based tutorials on this website use RubyMine], then you know how awesome the IDE is and how it makes programming fun and colorful.

I would highly recommend IntelliJ Community Edition (yes it is totally free) to use over Eclipse especially with Cucumber JVM projects because IntelliJ has proven itself to integrate well with cucumber, so instead of dealing with issues with Eclipse, your time is better utilized in writing cucumber scenarios and step definitions.

IntelliJ gives you the same awesome experience with Cucumber JVM as that of RubyMine with Cucumber

Installation Steps

Download intelliJ Community edition from here. I downloaded ideaIC-14.0.2.exe on windows machine

Double Click “ideaIC-14.0.2.exe” file and go with all defaults as a regular Windows installable. After that, open the IDE and below is what you would see. Click “Import Project”

Now point it to the location where your project is. In my case, I pointed it to the Class1 folder

Select “Import project from external model” and select “Maven” as below and hit next.

Go with the options as below (default) and click Next

The project is recognized as maven project and click Next

Since this is the first time, intelliJ might not be able to locate your JDK, hence follow the below instructions in the order of 1,2,3 and point to the JDK installed on your machine. Please follow the instructions on how to install JDK and click Next.

Now JDK is identified and the window should look as below. Click Next

Now enter the name of project. I left it as is. You can rename if you would like.

The project is finally imported and some description that I put up for your reference on how intelliJ identifies various files and folders.

Install Cucumber Java Plugin

Go ahead with all defaults and install the cucumber java plugin for IntelliJ. At this point, your intellij is ready to start developing cucumber jvm + any automation library scripts

Closing Thoughts

I prefer intelliJ over Eclipse and once you start using it, you would realize how awesome the editor is. I am not trying to sell it, because couple of years before, I did not prefer IntelliJ because you had to pay license fee, especially when we had Eclipse as a free option. Now with the Community edition and the plugins it provides, you just cannot afford NOT to have IntelliJ, especially using cucumber JVM and plugins thereof.

I understand that in some circumstances, if you have been stuck with Eclipse for many years, and you know your way navigating around various short cuts and options in Eclipse, you might want to still use Eclipse. No worries ! As we said our focus is to learn Cucumber and Automation in this tutorial – We are not getting into IDE wars.

That said, I would still recommend IntelliJ – seriously ! It makes programming cool and interesting as you start using it.