Worth Upgrading from Intellij Idea7 to Idea8?

Question

I use Intellij Idea 7 for Java dev. My dev is 'limited' to all J2SE features plus light JSP, Servlets, and super light usage of JPA. No J2EE, no massive use of random frameworks, etc.

Is it worth upgrading to ver 8? "Worth it" to me means better "core functionality" in terms of speed (ESPECIALLY startup speed), memory utilization (seems like it starts having serious problems with four or more projects open), and auto bug-finding. More frameworks supported and more languages supported (other than perhaps Haskell and C++), and more refactorings don't interest me at this time.

A while back, I installed a preview version of 8 and it seemed -exactly- the same as 7, as far as my needs were concerned.

Anyone loving the upgrade to 8, and if so, why?

Thanks

Answer 1

IntelliJ 8 has a configure plugins feature that allows you to disable plugins with dependencies. Nothing trial and error couldn't replicate, but it is nice.

Answer 2

It also seems to be easier to configure a new project over top of a complex collection of existing code.

For example, something that you would naturally configure into 5 or more modules.

Answer 3

Startup is only marginally slower. But indexing once opened is a lot faster than before, even unnoticeable for most projects, except after a commit to Subversion. It seems a commit to subversion triggers the indexing twice.

Answer 4

There is a really beautiful go to/create test wizard that is bound to ctrl-shift-T. Worth the upgrade by itself

Answer 5

The best way to tell is to check out the list of new features and decide for yourself. I haven't discovered any single feature so far that by itself is worth upgrading - the simplified UML view is quite nice, as is the improved Maven integration. The UI feels a bit more streamlined and faster. It seems like most of the attention has gone into non-Java features like better Flex support (which I am really thankful for as I don't like FlexBuilder but I haven't had a chance to use yet).

Answer 6

I am working on the Diana-EAP build - but 8 has git integration built in. The EAP has better git integration than the 8.0.1 release - it looks like that is something they are really focusing on.

Answer 7

Definitely not! Seems that the variables defined in our custom taglibs are no longer able to be used in the jsp (worked in 7.0.4). All red. No auto complete.

Oh, and the new settings menu is horrendous!

Answer 8

Some benefits of IntelliJ IDEA 8:

IDEA 8 supports Subversion 1.5 new functionality - e.g. merge tracking, which may be useful especially if your team (like ours) uses a lot of development branches and thus merging is frequent.

One detail I appreciated about IDEA 8: As you probably know, IDEA has had changelists for pretty long now, built on top of any underlying version control system - this is a really useful feature. So, now that Subversion itself supports changeslists, IDEA's changelist implementation has been changed so that it is perfectly compatible with Subversion's native changeslists. (For example, you'll be able to work with any changelists created in IDEA also when using svn command line tools directly.)

Edit: in your case, perhaps it is not worthwhile to upgrade. For me, at least, startup and file indexing seems to be somewhat slower in 8 than 7. [But for me personally the upgrade was definitely worth it, because it solved a long-standing VCS problem with IDEA 7 - it could hang "waiting for VCS sync to finish" for an hour or whatever after hitting Ctrl-K.]