Standardized JetBrains plugin management via devcontainer.json

August 11, 2025

Gitpod

Standardized JetBrains plugin management via devcontainer.json

You can now configure JetBrains IDE plugins directly in your devcontainer.json file, enabling fully standardized plugin management across development environments.

This update lets teams pre-install essential plugins from the JetBrains Marketplace using their plugin IDs, ensuring consistent tooling for all team members. It eliminates the need for manual plugin installation, reducing setup time and improving onboarding speed.

Key capabilities

Plugin installation: Specify plugin IDs from the JetBrains Marketplace for automatic installation.
Team consistency: Guarantee the same set of plugins across every developer environment.
Faster onboarding: Remove the manual step of plugin setup for new contributors.

Example configuration

Add plugins to your devcontainer.json using marketplace plugin IDs

json

{
	"name": "My Project",
	"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:ubuntu",
	"customizations": {
		"jetbrains": {
			"plugins": ["org.intellij.plugins.hcl", "com.intellij.kubernetes"]
		}
	}
}

This enhancement removes the previous limitation of non-customizable JetBrains plugin setups, bringing a consistent, repeatable configuration to the entire Dev Container ecosystem.

See the JetBrains documentation to learn more.