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Allow chaining native Reformat Code with google-java-format IntelliJ Plugin

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
java

Research direction

Start with the documented Using the formatter section for IntelliJ/Android Studio/JetBrains IDEs and inspect how the plugin replaces Reformat Code and Optimize Imports. Define the integration changes needed so native formatting can run alongside google-java-format, then verify that both the IDE code-style options and Google formatting remain usable.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

IntelliJ

The documentation for Using the formatter > IntelliJ/Android Studio/JetBrains IDEs states: "When enabled, the plugin fully replaces the native ​​Reformat Code​​ and ​​Optimize Imports​​ actions."

This design prevents developers from leveraging IntelliJ's built-in Code Style features (e.g., automatically adding a blank line after class headers via Editor > Code Style > Java > Blank Lines > After Class Header), even though this requirement aligns with our team's coding conventions and does not conflict with google-java-format rules.

Our current workaround is to first ​​disable the google-java-format plugin​​ for built-in code formatting, then ​​re-enable it​​ to apply Google Java formatting rules. This operation is very tedious and makes us feel very sad.

Dominant language
Java
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
3

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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