It makes me sad that there is no way to globally s...

# intellij

[Ellen Spertus]

It makes me sad that there is no way to globally set Actions on Save to Reformat Code for all new projects. I'm a professor and will have to tell my students to do that every time they create a project. I hope someone can let me know a workaround or upvote the issue. https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/7178879949842-Is-there-a-way-to-set-Actions-on-Save-for-all-new-projects-

[sreich]

OMG YES. THIS. Thank you i was thinking my environment was messed up. This has bothered me b ecause i come to import a new maven project and each time see this is off. I thought it was random because i switch b/w a lot of projects

before actions on save there is a plugin that is actually more elaborate than this, i think it's called save actions. i have thought about switching back to that. it can also do other fun things

[Ellen Spertus]

@sreich Thanks for the commiseration and letting me know about the plugin. Do you know if it works for all projects or needs to be set individually?

[sreich]

i'm pretty sure it's global

[Ellen Spertus]

Hallelujah!

[sreich]

install it and give it a shot

[Ellen Spertus]

I'm on it!

[Ellen Spertus]

The settings do not work for new projects. 😭

[sreich]

nooooo

[Ellen Spertus]

I'm going to need to apply for a job at JetBrains unless someone who works there already takes pity on us. https://twitter.com/swaglord__420/status/1377051721655066629

[Ellen Spertus]

@antonarhipov I see you're a Developer Advocate and one of my closest JetBrains connections on LinkedIn. Can you please help with this? 🙏

[antonarhipov]

@Ellen Spertus “Actions on Save to Reformat Code” — I sense some Eclipse habits 🙂

[antonarhipov]

I think it would be much easier for you just to remap the formatting key to Cmd+S/Ctrl+S as you don’t push them in IntelliJ anyway because of autosaving feature

[antonarhipov]

I don’t have a better workaround 🤷 But perhaps the plugin helps

[Ellen Spertus]

Remapping Cmd+S/Ctrl+S is a great idea, although I don't know if young ones are as compulsive about pressing it as I am.

[Ellen Spertus]

The inability to set it across projects undermines DRY.

[antonarhipov]

Another option is to check the correct formatting inspection before commit and then make sure there are no warnings before commit

[sreich]

what do you mean, eclipse habits? what would your approach be for code formatting?

[antonarhipov]

When you type with shortcuts in Intellij, in most cases your code will end up correctly formatted.

Save on actions is the feature in eclipse and most users develop a habit pressing Ctrl+s for saving the file and consequently executing the additional actions. In Intellij, there is just a different shortcut for formatting as saving of files is automatic, so if Ctrl+s shortcut is already so deep in the muscle memory, you can just assign Ctrl+s to reformatting action

However, formatting a full file isn't a very good approach anyway. Especially when working on large code bases, in branches, in teams. You can change a line of code and unintentionally reformat a large file, making the change too big for the code review

[Ellen Spertus]

Students will sometimes be pasting in code (from the instructor, not just from Stack Overflow). Having the code automatically properly formatted would save the students and graders lots of grief.

[sreich]

@antonarhipov that is why save on actions has the ability to reformat only changed lines. idk about them, i don't use ctrl-s. i auto save and i expect my IDE to reformat my code as i go