The Dev Containers Story: Introducing EelApi for Plugin Authors - The JetBrains Blog

With the modern shift towards isolated environments for development, IntelliJ Platform introduced EelApi, an API designed to aid plugin authors in managing projects hosted in environments like WSL or Dev Containers. Traditionally, IDEs and project files coexisted on the same machine, but newer setups often separate them, necessitating more precise handling of paths, processes, and environment variables. EelApi addresses these challenges by providing tools for environment-aware file operations, process executions, and networking, allowing plugins to interact seamlessly with execution environments distinct from the local machine. Initially tested with WSL, EelApi has been extended to support Dev Containers, enabling native integration where projects can be managed locally without full IDE backends in containers. Although still marked as experimental, EelApi is poised to evolve, with plans for stabilization, documentation, and broader adoption across IntelliJ-based IDEs, aiming to minimize the distinctions between local, WSL, and containerized projects for plugin developers.