VIM-4134 Split plugin into frontend/backend modules for rem dev by 1grzyb1 · Pull Request #1584 · JetBrains/ideavim

1grzyb1 · 2026-02-23T08:36:52Z

IdeaVim was a monolith that only worked when the IDE ran locally. JetBrains' Remote Dev and Fleet run the backend (project model, file system, processes) on a remote host while the frontend (UI, editor, keybindings) runs on the user's machine. A monolithic plugin can't participate in this split — every file operation, shell command, bookmark, and jump that touches the backend would fail.

This branch carves IdeaVim into three new modules — common (shared RPC contracts), backend (server-side implementations), and frontend (everything visible to the user) — connected by four Fleet RPC interfaces. The frontend never touches the file system directly; the backend never touches the injector or Vim options. Every cross-boundary call is an explicit, serializable RPC message.

1grzyb1 · 2026-03-05T08:14:17Z

/claude-review

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/jump/JumpsListener.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/file/FileRemoteApiImpl.kt

...s/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/process/ProcessRemoteApiImpl.kt

...ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkRemoteApiImpl.kt

slavam2605 · 2026-03-06T09:34:40Z

Two main points so far:

Use platform RPC IDs for Project, FileEditor, VirtualFiles, and similar classes. This will remove a lot of boilerplate code from this MR.
For each feature, think about whether it's possible to implement it entirely on the frontend. If yes, move it and its settings to the frontend. Settings are preferred to be on the frontend, since they are shared with the monolith IDE. So you will get your local settings if you use IdeaVim in remote development mode.

I'll wait for at least (1) to be fixed and will continue reviewing the code afterwards.

...es/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/file/FileBackendServiceImpl.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/file/FileRemoteApiImpl.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/jump/BackendJumpStorage.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/jump/JumpRemoteApiImpl.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/jump/JumpsListener.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/BackendUtil.kt

...ideavim-common/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkBackendService.kt

...im-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkBackendServiceImpl.kt

...ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkRemoteApiImpl.kt

modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/file/FileRemoteApiImpl.kt

...ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkRemoteApiImpl.kt

src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/ChangeGroup.kt

src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/HistoryGroup.java

slavam2605

Overall looks good.
I could missed something, because this MR is big and contains refactorings, code style changes and a lot of changes that don't look directly connected to split.

src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/handler/KeymapChecker.kt

slavam2605 · 2026-03-11T11:04:18Z

src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/newapi/IjVimMessages.kt

 import com.maddyhome.idea.vim.ui.ShowCmd
 import java.awt.Toolkit

-@Service


Why a lot of services are not annotated with @Service anymore? Do you have a reason to register them in XML (if they are)?

We decided we want to leave code in src but want to load services only on frontend so we register them in modules/frotnend. If we would leave @Service those would load both on frontend and backend

Ok. Why didn't you move the code, though? To avoid big changes in MR?

That's one thing but more important is that there are other plugins and PR that are dependent on that code and we didn't want to break backward compatibility

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

The field was used to break out of the mapping replay loop when max recursion depth was hit. This is unnecessary since handleKey already returns early on max depth, stopping further processing. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

- Use this.javaClass.classLoader instead of object {}.javaClass.classLoader - Alphabetize imports in VimInjector.kt - Remove outdated TODO in VimMotionGroupBase.kt - Fix missing trailing newline in VimPsiService.kt Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…resources Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…d EditorId

All operations uses rpc interface right now and on backend we detect if we are in disptch thread if so we won't use EDT.

Add focusNew parameter to splitWindow to allow NERDTree preview mappings (gs, gi, ga) to keep focus on the tree. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Commentary was doing visual selection on frontend and actual commenting on backend which resulted in strange undo behaviour. Moving whole commenting logic fixes all undo issues by making all actions single undo group.

1grzyb1 marked this pull request as draft February 23, 2026 08:39

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch 2 times, most recently from b201f8b to 041115e Compare February 26, 2026 07:28

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch 2 times, most recently from 278afd6 to 787f492 Compare March 5, 2026 08:14

claude bot reviewed Mar 5, 2026

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modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/jump/JumpsListener.kt Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

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modules/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/file/FileRemoteApiImpl.kt Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

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...s/ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/process/ProcessRemoteApiImpl.kt Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

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...ideavim-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkRemoteApiImpl.kt Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch from 787f492 to f1c7ed4 Compare March 5, 2026 08:23

1grzyb1 marked this pull request as ready for review March 5, 2026 08:24

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch from f1c7ed4 to 78014c4 Compare March 5, 2026 10:09

1grzyb1 mentioned this pull request Mar 5, 2026

fix: Add relative path support for :edit command #1601

Closed

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch 2 times, most recently from 34b7eba to 066cecd Compare March 6, 2026 08:10

slavam2605 reviewed Mar 6, 2026

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...ideavim-common/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkBackendService.kt Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch 4 times, most recently from 407b41e to c8fdd5e Compare March 10, 2026 13:08

slavam2605 reviewed Mar 10, 2026

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...im-backend/src/main/java/com/maddyhome/idea/vim/group/bookmark/BookmarkBackendServiceImpl.kt Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch from c8fdd5e to 38b94d8 Compare March 11, 2026 07:31

slavam2605 reviewed Mar 11, 2026

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slavam2605 approved these changes Mar 11, 2026

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1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch 2 times, most recently from cf3366d to 23279cd Compare March 11, 2026 12:48

Update copyright years to 2026

accf4af

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

1grzyb1 and others added 16 commits March 11, 2026 14:15

VIM-4134 add module skeleton and build configuration

dba7064

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 add vim-engine API changes for split architecture

87c82f7

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 add common module with shared services, RPC interfaces, and …

9dc8b91

…resources Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 add backend module with service implementations

c997a29

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 move frontend code to main source set

4b69ab8

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 add frontend-split module with RPC clients

1b3c9a2

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 update tests for new module structure

1432273

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 attach frontend debugger

9320e5f

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

VIM-4134 migrate to ProjectId for project resolution

044dd1c

VIM-4134 replace path-based file identification with VirtualFileId an…

0661ed4

…d EditorId

VIM-4134 Synchronize idea jump through topic

380f3dc

VIM-4134 Remove frontend split module

cce7d07

All operations uses rpc interface right now and on backend we detect if we are in disptch thread if so we won't use EDT.

VIM-4134 Load frontend classes only in frontend module

40d5f73

Fix focus in gi ga nerdtree

724bfa3

Add focusNew parameter to splitWindow to allow NERDTree preview mappings (gs, gi, ga) to keep focus on the tree. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

1grzyb1 force-pushed the VIM-4134/split branch from 23279cd to 724bfa3 Compare March 11, 2026 13:26

VIM-4134 Fix undo in commentary

1451545

Commentary was doing visual selection on frontend and actual commenting on backend which resulted in strange undo behaviour. Moving whole commenting logic fixes all undo issues by making all actions single undo group.

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1grzyb1 commented Feb 23, 2026 •

edited

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