Issue Tracking Systems

4.4Atlassian IDE Connector

The Atlassian IDE Connector is an add-on that allows a user to work with the Atlassian products within IDE. Now, one does not have to switch between websites, email messages, and new feeds to see what is happening to the project and code. Instead, the relevant JIRA issues are seen. Crucible reviews and Bamboo build information is located there, in the development environment.
The Atlassian IDE Connector is available for IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse. In the future, the author would like to support other IDEs too, such as Visual Studio.

Atlassian IntelliJ Connector

Homepage: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/IDEPLUGIN/IDE+Connector+Documentation

Supported IDE: IntelliJ IDEA

Supported TS: Atlassian JIRA (+ Crucible, Bamboo, FishEye)

License: Open source

Development status: Production/Stable

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector

Contrary to the Eclipse connector, mentioned below, the IntelliJ connector is built from by Atlassian. It uses RESTful web services for communication with Atlassian products. Currently, it supports the following:

• 
  JIRA – for issue tracking;
  
• 
  Crucible – for code reviews;
  
• 
  Bamboo – for continuous integration; and
  
• 
  FishEye – for source control system repository management.
  

[TSI-ATL1] [TSI-ATL2]

Installation

Installing the IntelliJ Connector is quite easy:

1. 
   Open the IDEA plug-in manager.
   
2. 
   Right-click ‘Atlassian IDE Connector’ in the ‘Available’ plug-ins tab.
   
3. 
   Select ‘Download and Install’.
   

More complicated is to find out if the plug-in is working. After restarting, nothing new appears in the IDE until the connection is configured to the servers in ‘Settings’.

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector – Servers configuration

This can be quite confusing. Having a button visible somewhere or a new menu item would be better; however, this might be the usual style of work with IDE. The author is not a user of this IDE.

[TSI-ATL3]

User Interface

After configuration of connections, the screen is divided into two halves. The top is usually the IDE workspace, the bottom is the Atlassian Connector UI.

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector – Workspace divider with tabs

Tabs to switch between individual product windows are at the top of the Connector UI. There are four tabs currently available (depending on configuration) with the following functions:

1. 
   JIRA tab (for Issue tracking & Request management)
   

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector – JIRA tab

• 
  View a filtered list of issues;
  
• 
  Create a new JIRA issue;
  
• 
  Comment on a JIRA issue and view comments;
  
• 
  Create a changelist from a JIRA issue;
  
• 
  Log work on a JIRA issue;
  
• 
  View a JIRA issue in an IDE output tool window;
  
• 
  View stack traces from a JIRA issue and click through to the relevant source file;
  
• 
  Assign an issue to one`s self or another user; and
  
• 
  Perform workflow actions on a selected issue;
  

Additional information can be found in the user guide:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/IDEPLUGIN/Working+with+JIRA+Issues+in+IDEA

2. 
   Bamboo tab (for Continuos integration)
   

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector – Bamboo tab

• 
  Receive notifications of failed builds;
  
• 
  Re-run a build;
  
• 
  Open the Bamboo build details in an IDEA output tool window;
  
• 
  View a Bamboo build log;
  
• 
  View failed tests and stack traces;
  
• 
  Click a link in a stack trace to go directly to the code that failed;
  
• 
  Re-run a failed test;
  
• 
  View changed files;
  
• 
  Compare the build version of a file with your local version;
  
• 
  Compare the build version of a file with the previous repository version;
  
• 
  Open the repository version of a file in your IDEA editor;
  
• 
  Comment on a Bamboo build; and
  
• 
  Label a Bamboo build.
  

Additional information can be found in the user guide:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/IDEPLUGIN/Working+with+Bamboo+Builds+in+IDEA

3. 
   Crucible tab (for Code review)
   

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector – Crucible tab

• 
  Receive notifications of new and updated reviews;
  
• 
  View your filtered reviews within IDE;
  
• 
  View the review details and comments in an IDEA output tool window;
  
• 
  Create a review;
  
• 
  View the source code that is under review;
  
• 
  View the diff;
  
• 
  Add a review comment;
  
• 
  Add a review comment on a source code line;
  
• 
  Move to the commented code in the source view;
  
• 
  Add a changelist to an existing review;
  
• 
  Move a review through its workflow; and
  
• 
  Complete a review.
  

Additional information can be found in the user guide:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/IDEPLUGIN/Working+with+Crucible+Reviews+in+IDEA

4. 
   FishEye support (for Source control systems repository management)
   

Screen shot : Atlassian IntelliJ Connector – FishEye support

• 
  Open a file in IDEA by supplying its FishEye URL;
  
• 
  Open a source file in FishEye’s web interface, with just one click from IDE; and
  
• 
  Use the copy to clipboard option to share references to your file with others.
  

Additional information can be found in the user guide:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/IDEPLUGIN/Working+with+your+FishEye+Repository+View+in+IDEA

Atlassian Eclipse Connector

Homepage: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/IDEPLUGIN/Atlassian+Eclipse+Connector

Supported IDE: Eclipse

Supported TS: Atlassian JIRA (+ Crucible, Bamboo)

License: Open source

Development status: Beta
The Eclipse version of the connector is based on the Mylyn plug-in. Actually, it is just a bundled Mylyn with a JIRA connector and there are two added modules for working with Crucible and Bamboo, which were ported to the Eclipse platform from the previously-mentioned IntelliJ Connector. Due to this, everything that was said about Mylyn is valid also for this connector.

Screen shot : Atlassian Eclipse Connector

[TSI-ATL1]

Conclusion

The Atlassian community developed two plug-ins, which allows users to fully control their Atlassian development tools within IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse. IDEA Connector is much more advanced and much more usable than its younger sibling for Eclipse, which is just an enhanced Mylyn; however IDEA Connector is already in version 2.0 and Eclipse Connector is still in the beta version.
IDEA Connectors user interface is simple to use and very intuitive and working with it was really simple. The Plug-in itself communicated with Atlassian tools very fast – the problems which the author had with the CodeBeamer ALM plug-in seemed to be solved in this product.
The next chapter will describe the development of the Atlassian NetBeans Connector, which is going to be inspired above all by the IDEA Connector; however, interesting ideas from other (previously mentioned) plug-ins will be also used.