You can find the file in build/distributions/pluginName-version.zip. To generate a build ready for deployment just call the buildPlugin gradle task and it will generate a zip file with the plugin. The method we used to set up the project with Gradle will make it a bit different, but not harder. If you follow the tutorials you’ll know how to do that using the Plugin Development environment. Once you finished coding your super awesome custom plugin, you’ll want to use it in your daily routine. You can try building with different versions and see if it works (and it will probably take less time), but I think it’s a great exercise and you can learn some internals, like Icon paths you can reuse, actions, how a specific tool window works. To find out which version that is you can check out this article, in which you’ll learn to download the source for Android Studio and start looking into it for information that is not easily available through other means. Android Studio is based of some version of IntelliJ Idea Open Source project. Plugin compatibility is explained in more detail here. If you followed the setup described here, the plugin should work with Android Studio 3.0 (this version is one of the latest when writing this article). It’s the entry point to your custom plugin, where you can define new languages, editors for special file types, specific actions that can be triggered, settings screens or tool windows (and many more).Īll of these components and how to integrate them are documented in the links above.

You can also define how other plugins can integrate with yours via extensions. This is where you tell IntelliJ what components you have, what integrations, and it will know how to load/display them. The plugin.xml you created in “Step 3” is the connection to the outside world (e.g. There are some UI components specific to IntelliJ but they should be very familiar. You can use standard Java Swing components for a custom user interface. The code you write is effectively Java (or Kotlin).

I’ll mention a couple of things that stood out to me, as an Android developer reading these docs. I recommend reading about Plugin Components and User Interface Components from the official documentation. The alternativeIdePath refers to the installation path of the IDE, you’ll have to adjust this based on your OS and IDE version.

Android studio plugin vs project