Day after day I find little gems in IntelliJ 9 that just make me more productive and give me more time to deal with the real interesting things.

Today for example I had to change a web.xml file which I was said that I should take care not to commit because if this file would go to our customer than we would have a problem.

We are currently using JIRA and Greenhopper and I use the excellent plugin Atlassian Connector for IntelliJ IDEA

My working process, which is not rocket science but needs a bit of discipline, is the following:

  1. Before starting a change I check that there is a task in our JIRA
  2. Then I get this task and create a changeset in IntelliJ
  3. Starting from now, everything I change is logged into that changeset
  4. If I need to work shortly on another task I get another task from JIRA and create another changeset and start to log my work on that new changeset
  5. When it is time to commit I just commit the changeset. Done

Back to my web.xml issue, I had to take care not to commit it. I knew it from the start that I will have an issue if I commit that file.

So immediately, having the information,  I created a new changeset named “Do not commit” and added the web.xml change to that changeset.

4583794252_6d251ef393_o[1]

I was then on the safe side! Why? Because after working almost the whole morning and changing hundred of files I didn’t had to remember about that possible issue because the tool will remind me that. What a mind refresher!

If I had not done that then I would have to first remind that I don’t have to commit that file and then I would have to browse the hundreds of file searching for the one I have to commit and the other one.

So help yourself work on your toolset and become a more productive developer!