As part of the programming module you study on the course, you are required to interact with the Python programming language. This interaction will be undertaken using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which will be installed within the macOS operating system.
In this guide, you shall be taken through the journey of installing the Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA IDE and how it will interact with the macOS operating system for any module that may make use of the IDE.
The IDE recommended by this course, is the JetBrains suite of applications. The JetBrains suite is payware, and as such they do not come for free. However, as students at this university, you are able to get a free educational licence. To get your free license, follow the instructions at the following URL:
Important
You will want to use your Coventry University e-mail address to register for your JetBrains account. It is also very important you remember the password for this account, as you will need to use these details to activate the IDE and renew your licence every year you are a student.
The JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA application is an IDE and is relatively useful for the course you are studying as it provides a means to develop applications (or reports) for a variety of different languages.
Downloading the IDE is relatively straight forward. You can visit the following web-page and download the application:
Download JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA
Important
When downloading the IDE for macOS you need to select the relevant package installer, Intel or Apple Silicon (M1, M2 etc.)
Once you have downloaded the application, open the package and you will be presented with a screen. Follow the instructions that are presented in the window, and drag the IntelliJ IDEA icon to the Applications folder. This will begin copying the contents of the application to your applications directory on macOS. When the operation has successfully completed, you will be able to open Launchpad and see that the IDE is now present in the list of applications.
In the Launchpad screen, click on the IDE, and it will begin to load. Before the main IDE window is opened, a dialogue window will be presented asking whether you want to open an application downloaded from the internet. Click on the Open button. This will then load the IntelliJ IDEA user agreement, click on the checkbox to agree to the user agreement. Another window will be presented, asking whether you want to share your data, click on the Don't Send button.
Once the relevant user agreements and data sharing processes have been completed the IntelliJ IDEA application will begin to load.
On the first instance of following this guide, and the IDE has been installed and loaded, it will ask for you to activate your software. In order to do this, you need to click on the Log In to Jetbrains Account... button. This will open an internet browser window, whereby you will need to sign-in with your JetBrains account you created earlier.
Once you have logged in to your account, the internet browser will close automatically, and you should now see an Activate button appear. Click on this button and your IDE will be activated.
Before you can begin using the IDE for providing solutions for the programming module using the Python programming language, you are required to install a plugin for the IntelliJ IDEA IDE. Once the IDE has loaded, you will be met with a splash screen similar to the one shown in Figure 8. On the splash screen, you will see a button labelled Plugins on the left-hand side of the splash screen, click on this button. The screen will change to present you with a Marketplace of various plugins that can be installed.
On this screen, you can see that the Marketplace tab is active with a blue line underneath the label Marketplace. Directly below this is a search box, and in this box you need to enter the term Python, and a list of options will pop-up.
The first option returned should be labelled just Python with the author being JetBrains s.r.o. This is the plugin that is required to be installed, therefore you can click on the green button labelled Install. This will begin the installation process of the Python plugin for the IDE.
Once it has been successfully installed, you will be met once again with a green button, but this time labelled Restart IDE, click this button and the IDE will be restarted. Once the IDE has restarted, we can begin with the creation of a new Python project.
In this section of the guide, we shall begin the process of creating a new Python project. Once the IDE has loaded, you will be met with a splash screen similar to the one shown in Figure 8. On the splash screen, you will see a button labelled New Project, click on this button. A new window will pop up with a variety of different options.
In this window you will need to select the New Project option on the left hand-side. Once this item has been
selected, you will then be asked to provide a name of the project and the location where you would like to save the
project folder. In this instance, you can all the project My_First_Project and the location can stay as the default
location: /home/ian/IdeaProjects.
Note
Notice the underscores in the name of the project? The Ubuntu Linux distribution does not like blank spaces in filenames or directory names. As our project will create a new directory, we need to replace the blank spaces with an underscore.
On the same screen, you can see an option to create a Git repository, you can leave this option unchecked. There are also options to select the type of programming language that will be used. If you have installed the Python plugin correctly, an option for Python should be presented. Ensure that this option is selected, as you will be wanting to create a Python project.
With the Python language selected, you will then be met with some additional options to create an Environment. In this instance, you will want to select the New option, and then directly below that you will want to select the Virtualenv environment type. Virtual environments are a great method of keeping your system Python's interpreter separate to any individual projects you are working upon.
Once these settings have been applied, and are similar to the ones shown in Figure 11, you can proceed and click on the Create button. This will begin the process of creating the new Python project.
That is the end of this guide on setting up the JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA IDE. If you have followed all the necessary steps correctly, you should have a fully functional IDE which will enable you to complete any necessary programming based lab activities you will participate with on this course.
If you have spotted any errors or issues within this tutorial, you can e-mail Dr Ian Cornelius. Ensure to include in your message a description of the error or issue and a possible resolution. Also remember to include a URL to the page with the issue or error.