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Introduction

I've looked around and haven't seen anyone else having my issue.

Basically, I am wanting to run a start.bat file to start up my server before I start up my debugging session. I currently have my debugging inside of an IntelliJ Configuration and it works well. The problem is that in the options for my configuration I can't seem to add an "External Tools" task to the Before Launch section. I was able to add a maven task here previously. However, when I follow the following steps, the "start.bat" is not added.

  1. First I go into Settings->Tools->External Tools to add my Spigot-Server tool which basically calls the start.bat file inside of a test-server directory.

    Snippet of External Tools

  2. Second, I go into my "Debug Spigot" configuration and at the bottom, I see a "Before Launch" Section.

    Snippet of Spigot Debug options

  3. I click on the + inside of that section to add a new task, and I click on "External Tools"

    Snippet of adding External Tools Task

  4. And then I make sure my Spigot-Server task is selected.

    Snippet of select external tool

  5. And then once I hit okay, the window closes but I don't see a new task added to the before launch section. It looks the same it did before I clicked on anything. I also don't see any status message at the bottom of IntelliJ

I basically expect the task "Spigot-Server" to show under the Before Launch section. This would basically start up the server and once the server was completely started, it would then launch the debugging configuration.

I think it may be an issue with IntelliJ's UI. I searched IntelliJ's issue tracker But couldn't find any that matched.

I'm wanting to know if there are any work arounds to get this setup in IntelliJ>

Sunderam Dubey
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Shawn
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  • While it looks like a bug that the settings are not saved, your approach will not work anyway even if it saved correctly. Before launch will always wait for the previous task to finish with the zero exit code. If you start a bat file which starts a server that continues to run, this task will not finish until the server is stopped, therefore your main configuration will not run. – CrazyCoder Dec 16 '21 at 21:41
  • Ahh interesting. Thanks for the information! Perhaps I could have a kind of wrapper batch file that I could start the server in and then wait a few seconds to give it time to start, and then I could use that inside of my external tools instead of directly the start.bat. Thanks for the information! :D – Shawn Dec 16 '21 at 21:57

1 Answers1

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I was able to achieve my goal by doing some workarounds that I discovered with the help of CrazyCoder. I found this stackoverflow question that told me about the batch plugin.

I was able to create a Batch run configuration for a wrapper batch file that gets around the limitation CrazyCoder mentioned. He said that even if I did get my setup where my server runs before my debugging is launched, my debugging would never launch. This is because the terminal process needs to exit before the next task starts.

To get around this this is the wrapper batch file I created.

@echo OFF
START "Spigot-Server" /D C:\Users\rocke\Documents\Programming\Minecraft\Spigot\capture-the-carrot\test-server "start.bat"

ping -n 3 127.0.0.1 >nul

It basically uses the "START" command to run the task asynchronously and then waits 2 seconds. This is because all I need to do is wait for the start.bat command to run the very first part so that it establishes remote debugging. And then the wrapper ends after 2 seconds (the 3 represents the number of seconds I want to wait +1). And this allows the Debugging process to start while also ensuring that the server has setup remote debugging!

I'll just share screenshots of my configuration if anyone wants to do the same.

Maven Build Configuration

Spigot Server Start Configuration

Remote Debugging Configuration

The way this is setup is once I run the Remote Debugging Configuration, it has a "Before Launch" Task of Spigot Server. Spigot Server also has a "Before Launch" Task of Maven Build Project.

So my Maven Build Project runs, then my Spigot Server wrapper runs and after 2 seconds terminates, and then my Debugging Configuration runs!

If you have any questions regarding remote debugging with spigot, use this resource: https://www.spigotmc.org/wiki/intellij-debug-your-plugin/

Shawn
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