Dependency Assistant Plugin

An IntelliJ IDEA plugin that helps you upgrade dependencies declared in Maven, Gradle, GitHub Actions, NPM, and Antora projects, plus Maven and Gradle wrapper properties. Dependency Assistant resolves available releases from the relevant repositories, registries, or release feeds and can apply updates selectively. When JetBrains Package Checker is available in the IDE, known Maven and npm vulnerabilities can be shown alongside versions.

Features

• Scans supported build files, including pom.xml, Gradle build files, Gradle version catalogs, GitHub Actions workflows, package.json, Antora playbooks, and wrapper properties.

• Interactive dependency upgrade review.

• Resolves versions from literals, Maven and Gradle properties, Maven profile-specific properties, Gradle version catalogs, Git refs, and wrapper URLs where possible.

• Suggests update candidates and lets you pick target versions.

• Uses ecosystem-specific release metadata sources, including Maven repositories, the Gradle Plugin Portal, Gradle distribution metadata, GitHub, Git tags, and npmjs.

• Supports Maven repository credentials declared in Maven settings.xml when they can be resolved by the active Maven installation.

• Shows Package Checker vulnerability information for Maven and npm packages when available, and can suggest remediation.

• Upgrade Plan: Staging of Dependency upgrades for later review, ticket creation and the plan as batch upgrade.

• Links to release notes and issue trackers when project metadata (e.g. POM, NPM Registry) is available.

• Inspections for Maven and Gradle wrapper URLs, unpinned GitHub Actions, and dependency rule violations (dependencyfile.json).

• Inspection for version and declaration drift.

• Intentions to insert wrapper SHA-256 checksums, open release notes, and report issues.

Figure 1. Screenshot: dependency version check dialog

Figure 2. Screenshot: Version Suggestions

Figure 3. Screenshot: Version Documentations

Installation

Requires IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2 (build 252) or newer.

Install the Dependency Assistant plugin from the IDE Settings / Plugins marketplace, or build the distribution locally (see Building) and install the ZIP from disk.

The plugin does not require the Java plugin and installs on any IntelliJ-based IDE (for example WebStorm or PyCharm). Maven, Gradle, GitHub Actions, NPM, and Antora support activate when the corresponding IDE plugins are present.

Usage

1. Open a supported build file in the editor.

2. Start a check

   • Use the intention action (light bulb) when the caret is on a supported dependency version or declaration, or

   • Alternatively: Choose Tools › Dependency Assistant › Upgrade dependencies….

3. In the dialog, review suggestions, adjust Upgrade to and the Upgrade checkbox per row, then confirm to apply changes.

Updates are written to the build files that contain the selected dependency declarations. The plugin may consider related files in the project when resolving coordinates, properties, catalogs, and release sources.

Building

Prerequisites: JDK 21+, Gradle (wrapper included).

./gradlew build

To produce a plugin archive for local installation:

./gradlew buildPlugin

The ZIP is generated under build/distributions/.

Continuous integration runs tests and the IntelliJ Plugin Verifier. See the Actions tab on GitHub.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at https://github.com/mp911de/dependency-assistant.

License

Dependency Assistant is Open Source software released under the Apache 2.0 license.