This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Marc Logemann. Original Post: annoying xml config persistence bug in IntelliJ IDEA Feed Title: Logemann Blog Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LogemannBlog Feed Description: Marc Logemann's thoughts on java and other stuff Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Marc Logemann Latest Posts From Logemann Blog

after wondering for some years why IDEA always marks the $Project$.iws file as modified in my subversion client, i investigated the problem. I closed IDEA comitted the IWS file and re-opened IDEA. After closing it again without doing anything in IDEA, the IWS was in status “changed” again.

Then i ve done a diff on the IWS and got the following:

<showStructure Scope=”false” ProjectPane=”false” PackagesPane=”false” Favorites=”false” />
vs.
<showStructure PackagesPane=”false” ProjectPane=”false” Scope=”false” Favorites=”false” />

It seems that IDEAs way of persisting the IDE configuration to the XML file is a little bit random when it comes to xml attribute ordering. And while i am in complainig mode, i dont like the IWS file at all how it is structured at this point. The data is highly volatile because it stores every file change in there, but it also stores important IDE configuration like Runtime definitions and stuff which is not that volatile during a project.

The point is, right now the IWS file gets changed in every IDE session and thus gets into every commit changeset. Totally ignoring the IWS in subversion is risky too because there are things like the said Debug and Run definitions that you want to store. To me, the IWS file should be split up. I dont care about my last IDE screen sizes or open tabs with regard to subversion, but i definitely want to store more important parts of the IWS in subversion.

How are you people handling those IDEA settings? I assume most of you simply ignore IWS wrt subversion. But to me thats definitely not the optimal choice.