XEChat-Idea: Netty‑Based Instant Chat Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA – Overview, Structure, Environment, and Deployment Guide

XEChat‑Idea is a Netty‑based instant‑messaging plugin for IntelliJ IDEA that provides real‑time chat and game‑battle features.

Project structure includes three modules: a common library (xechat‑commons), the IDEA plugin (xechat‑plugin), and the server (xechat‑server), as shown in the directory tree.

├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── xechat-commons //公共模块
│   ├── pom.xml
│   └── src
├── xechat-plugin //IDEA插件端
│   ├── build.gradle
│   ├── gradle
│   ├── gradle.properties
│   ├── gradlew
│   ├── gradlew.bat
│   ├── settings.gradle
│   └── src
└── xechat-server //服务端
    ├── pom.xml
    └── src

Server side runs on JDK 8 with Maven 3.6.x, while the plugin side requires JDK 11, Gradle 6.x and IDEA 2021.2.x.

To build and run the server, edit src/main/resources/logback.xml to set the log path, then execute the main class XEChatServer.java or package with mvn package and start with java -jar target/xechat-server‑xxx.jar .

For the IDEA plugin, adjust the IDEA version in build.gradle , run the plugin with the Gradle task intellij { version '2021.2' } or Tasks > intellij > runIde , and after packaging the zip build/distributions/xechat-plugin‑xxx.zip install it via IDEA → Preferences → Plugins.

Before deployment, modify the server address in cn.xeblog.plugin.client.XEChatClient by changing the HOST and PORT constants.

The article also includes promotional links to join a backend technology study group and other related resources.