CODEWITHSUNDEEP
intellij-idea
MaatDeamon
MaatDeamon

Reputation: 9771

IntelliJ multi-project

Moving to intellij i'm trying to understand properly the logic behind the its project structure. I come from eclipse. After reading for a while i understood the relation between workspace and project, then between project and modules. However something that is puzzling me is the logic of the default project configuration in Intellij. Indeed, when you create a project there is an initial module which to a certain extend is equivalent to the Project itself. To be more precise, the initial module folder is the Project folder. This is kind of confusing to me. Then when you add more module they are sub-module of that module.

My first question is what is the rationale of making this first module equivalent to the project folder ?

Following this, i would further ask, what the point of having modules as sub-module of others. In eclipse i use to have simply different project (i.e. module) independent from each other and adding the dependency as necessary. So how does the Idea solution makes it better, if not what is the rational here ?

I saw that one can start an empty project and then add modules to it. However in that case, the modules added are added as subfolder of the Project and therefore there is no initial module equivalent to the Project folder ? So why this difference and what is the rationale behind it ?

What would be the better approach, the first or second ?

Would it be ok to have this first initial module with no src or test folder but just with the proper facet so as to spread it to the sub-module?

I would appreciate if someone could explain a bit the rational of all of it ?

I will move to SBT soon (i.e. maven structure which I suppose inspired all modern IDE project Structure) if one want to explain within that context fine, nevertheless i want to understand the rationale in intelliJ first.

Many thanks,

-M-

PS: What i'm looking for is some advise for some multi-module project structure in Intellij as i'm moving my eclipse workspaces to it.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 232

Answers (1)

Bastien Jansen
Bastien Jansen

Reputation: 8846

I think that it's not uncommon for projects to be relatively small, so they don't need fancy modules with dependency management etc. In that case, I find the default project created by IntelliJ to fit perfectly my needs: no need to add submodules, everything is directly in the parent project, it reduces the structure to its bare minimum.

On the other hand, big projects with submodules will likely resemble the structure of a Maven multimodule project (perhaps SBT too, but I don't know this tool at all). You have a parent root which acts as a container for submodules. The parent project may also store configuration (a default SDK, a language level etc. that will be inherited by the submodules). The actual code will be contained in the submodules.

Regarding your questions, it all depends on the kind of project you are developing. For a small codebase, you could keep a simple project with no submodule. For bigger codebases, you can either create modules manually, or import an existing Maven/SBT/whatever project, which will automatically create modules reflecting the imported structure.

Upvotes: 1

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