>= 2.4.0 is not adding transitive dependencies of plugin dependencies

[jansorg]

What happened?

I was building against IntelliJ Ultimate 2024.1 with dependency plugin("Pythonid:241.14494.314").

With Gradle plugin 2.1.0 a test using the Python file type is successful.
With >= 2.4.0 the same test fails, the idea.log file of the sandbox only shows that the Python plugin was not loaded but doesn't tell why it's not loaded.

Relevant log output or stack trace

It's a bit weird that the Python plugin is loaded from .../python which is overriding .../python/lib/python.jar (i.e. the plugin directory is overriding it's plugin.jar file)

idea.log:

2025-04-24 15:43:24,483 [    235]   INFO - #c.i.i.p.PluginManager - PluginDescriptor(name=Python, id=Pythonid, descriptorPath=plugin.xml, path=~/self-employment/customers/Qwiet AI/sources/IDEIntegration/jetbrains/test-integration/build/idea-sandbox/IU-2024.1/plugins-test/python, version=241.14494.314, package=PythonId, isBundled=false) overrides PluginDescriptor(name=Python, id=Pythonid, descriptorPath=plugin.xml, path=~/self-employment/customers/Qwiet AI/sources/IDEIntegration/jetbrains/test-integration/build/idea-sandbox/IU-2024.1/plugins-test/python/lib/python.jar, version=241.14494.314, package=PythonId, isBundled=true)

2025-04-24 15:43:24,507 [    259]   INFO - #c.i.i.p.PluginManager - Loaded custom plugins: Go (241.14494.158), Terraform and HCL (241.14494.313), PHP (241.14494.240), Ruby (241.14494.240), Scala (2024.1.25)

Steps to reproduce

I was able to fix this by adding bundledPlugin("org.toml.lang") because it's a dependency of the Python plugin for Ultimate.
2.1.0 seems to have done this automatically.
2.4.0 and later doesn't seem to resolve this. This makes it very difficult to find out why a plugin is not loaded.

Gradle IntelliJ Plugin version

2.5.0

Gradle version

8.12

Operating System

Linux

Link to build, i.e. failing GitHub Action job

No response

[hsz]

IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin no longer resolves optional dependencies of the plugins you depend on.
This is clear in the compilation—you don't want to accidentally use a class from the transitive dependency, which may not be present in the runtime, as the end user may disable such a plugin.

The same applies to tests – only required transitive dependencies are loaded.

However, the tests runner is somewhat "broken," and its classpath is pretty isolated, with no access to all bundled IntelliJ Platform modules/plugins. See IJPL-180516.

To run a simple test, you must add an explicit dependency on the com.intellij plugin, but the IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin handles that already under the hood.
If you add explicit dependencies on other plugins – those are loaded in tests as well. But without optional dependencies, as they may often conflict and produce unexpected results – i.e. when in your plugin.xml there's an optional dependency defined, which you want to test having no optional plugin loaded.

To address that correctly, you may want to add the org.toml.lang not as a regular dependency, but:

testBundledPlugin("org.toml.lang")

To figure out that a bundled plugin was not loaded correctly due to the missing bundled module in the tests classpath, you can review the idea.log file of your tests, such as /build/idea-sandbox/IU-2024.3/log-test/idea.log, which may tell you:

Module intellij.platform.images.copyright is not enabled because dependency com.intellij.platform.images is not available
and as a workaround for the platform issue, you can that missing dependency.

I hope this will help you.

[jansorg]

Thank you for your reply!

I agree that optional dependencies should not be added automatically.

But, if I'm not mistaken, the Python plugin's dependency on the Toml plugin is not optional, but required.

This is shown in the idea.log file if I run without the Toml plugin added in my own build setup:

2025-04-25 10:35:23,308 [    251]   INFO - #c.i.i.p.PluginManager - Problems found loading plugins:
  The Python Community Edition (id=PythonCore, path=~/self-employment/customers/Qwiet AI/sources/IDEIntegration/jetbrains/test-integration/build/idea-sandbox/IU-2025.1/plugins-test/python-ce, version=251.23774.460) plugin Plugin 'Python Community Edition' requires plugin 'org.toml.lang' to be installed
  The Python (id=Pythonid, path=~/self-employment/customers/Qwiet AI/sources/IDEIntegration/jetbrains/test-integration/build/idea-sandbox/IU-2025.1/plugins-test/python, version=251.23774.460) plugin Plugin 'Python' requires plugin 'Python Community Edition' to be enabled

(Both PythonCore and PythonId are added now in my build because I noticed that Python for Ultimate now requires Python for Community)

The Python Community plugin declares these dependencies:

.../PythonCore-251.23774.460/python-ce/lib/python-ce.jar!/META-INF/plugin.xml:

  <vendor url="https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/">JetBrains</vendor>
  <module value="com.intellij.modules.python" />
  <dependencies>
    <plugin id="com.intellij.modules.lang" />
    <plugin id="com.intellij.modules.python-core-capable" />
    <plugin id="com.intellij.modules.json" />
    <plugin id="org.toml.lang" />
    <module name="intellij.libraries.ktor.client" />
    <module name="intellij.libraries.ktor.client.cio" />
  </dependencies>

Isn't <plugin id="org.toml.lang" /> declaring a required dependency?
IMHO org.toml.lang should be added automatically.

Currently, all non-optional dependencies must be added in the build setup. With several major build versions and dependencies changing all the time, it's difficult to keep a build setup working...

[novotnyr]

Hey,
this looks like an issue with the Structure library that is shared between IntelliJ Plugin Verifier and this project. If the Python is your explicit dependency, theorg.toml.lang is a mandatory dependency, too.