IntelliJ IDEAL Plugin Contest 2008

The IntelliJ IDEAL Plugin Contest is now CLOSED

Competition overview

Announcing the third IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Competition with cash and software prizes valued at over $66,700. If you've been thinking about writing a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (or even if you haven't) here's a stellar opportunity to hone you skills, extend the capabilities of your favorite Java IDE, and maybe walk away a few thousand dollars richer! This page will give you the basics on the contest and provide links to the nitty-gritty detail.

• Your contest submission will be a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (or several plugins working together with IDEA and other products).
• All plugins must be contributed under a Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) or Apache open source license.
• You may submit an entirely new plugin, or one that already exists in the IntelliJ IDEA Plugin Repository. For an existing plugin, you should extend or enhance its functionality and your entry will be judged solely on the new functionality.
• Plugins should be compliant with the IntelliJ IDEA Open API versions 7.x or/and 8.0. We know 8.0 hasn't been officially released yet, but we will provide contestants with a summary of what's changed and JavaDoc. Sign up for the
  EAP to get access to the API as well as advanced 8.0 builds to test your plugin .

Please consult the Plugin Wish List to focus your efforts on developing a new and in-demand plugin. Also, do check the Plugin Repository for the list of existing plugins.

Don't forget about the plugins newsgroup at news://news.intellij.net/jetbrains.intellij.plugins. On the newsgroup you can find ideas to use, share ideas with others, find collaborators, and solicit feedback, all of which can be a great help to you during the development phase of your plugin. Also you can find out if anybody has been asking for some functionality that hasn't yet been delivered.

We recommend that you submit your plugins early in the development cycle. This way, you will enjoy the possibility to obtain feedback from the people who will download and use your plugins. You can release multiple versions before the contest ends. Remember that only the final version will be judged.

Key Dates

• The contest officially begins September 15 at 12:01 p.m. GMT + 2 (that's Prague time at noon)
• The contest officially ends December 15 at 11:59 p.m. GMT + 2 (still Prague time at noon)
• Winners will be announced on January 30.

Basic Judging Criteria

All plugins will be judged by the votes of the IntelliJ IDEA Development team. We'll be looking for:

• Usefulness
• Creativity and Elegance
• Completeness
• Code quality and documentation

More details >>

What's in it for you?

Prizes!

Over $66,700 in cash and development tools software, with a $7,000 First Prize award. For more info, see Prizes.

Prestige

While winning a prize isn't guaranteed to make your career or skyrocket it to unbelievable heights, it certainly can't hurt the ol' resume/CV either. And you'll definitely gain a solid reputation within the IntelliJ IDEA community (FWIW!) and maybe even beyond.

Skills

We hope this contest will help you hone your development skills, and perhaps provide a springboard to bigger things down the road. If nothing else, you should come out with a new tool that at least you find useful!

T-Shirt

Hey, this is the software industry which means T-Shirts, right? So everybody who enters a non-trivial plugin gets a spiffy commemorative contest T-Shirt which is sure to make them the envy of friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc. No, you don't get one for submitting a Hello World! plugin - not even a Hello JetBrains! plugin!

What's in it for JetBrains?

1. Plugins make IntelliJ IDEA even more capable, which makes it more attractive to more people, and so helps us sell more licenses. (Hey, we do have to pay the bills you know!)
2. We want more people to learn how to develop plugins for IntelliJ IDEA. Once they try it, we hope they'll think it's fun and keep doing it (which further helps out with #1!)
3. We want to learn how we can make writing plugins smoother and easier. If you run into any frustrations or questions while you're creating your masterpiece, let us know and we'll make it better.
4. Last but not least, we can't wait to see what cool stuff you will come up with!

Special Thanks

We would like to thank all the super vendors who have donated licenses for their products in support of the IntelliJ IDEA 2008 Plugin and Win Contest. A list of contest sponsors appears below.

We would like to give special thanks and acknowledgement to the folks at Atlassian, not only for their extremely generous donation of product licenses, but also for kindly allowing us to "cabbage" content from their successful plugin contest site, and providing tips and advice based on their experience, all of which saved us a great deal of reinventing the wheel. Thank you, guys - much appreciated!

Sponsoring Companies