I have a complex project that uses a Ruby::Rake system to generate java (and other) code and do a bunch of other complex things. But I also really like the intellij-idea editor debugger for java etc.
I would want to use my existing scripts I have for various build stages and even dependency checking, code generation before compile, (maybe even the compiling too) generating and deploying data for tests, deploying output to embedded devices, packaging etc etc.
This would be like custom build steps in VisualStudio or “makefile build”.
and if one compiles the java with the script, can it’s output be directed to play nicely with the IDE for navigating errors and the like.
Ant doesn’t do it for me 🙂
IntelliJ IDEA build system can be integrated with Ant or Maven in the way that it can execute targets automatically before compilation and upon other events. It doesn’t work for Rake, but you can wrap rake call into a simple Ant target with exec task.
This way Ant will run rake that will generate java code that will be compiled by IntelliJ IDEA if source root is set to the location where sources are generated.