Bash is a widely used but complicated language with many oddities. BashSupport Pro can make your Bash development efficient and enjoyable by providing high-quality Bash language support in your JetBrains IDE.
It provides you with all the features that you expect for full language support: a refined editor experience with completions and formatting, powerful run configurations, debugger integration, a test runner and much more. BashSupport Pro integrates the best available utilities for Bash, including bashdb, ShellCheck, bats-core, and shfmt.
We are pretty certain that right now, there is nothing better out there for Bash development than BashSupport Pro. See how it compares to the bundled JetBrains Shell Script plugin and to Visual Studio Code, feature by feature.
BashSupport Pro brings productivity–enhancing context aware enhancements to scripting, shellcheck and shfmt integration to avoid footguns, and testing integrations to robustify the Bash code that band-aids the whole internet.
The editor provides Bash syntax highlighting and other helpers like code folding and language injections. It offers code completion, covering all variables and functions in the current scope, and code analysis with ShellCheck, providing you with warnings and quick fixes. It also lets you do rename refactorings without breaking your code, and automatic code formatting in Google’s code style (or your own).
BashSupport Pro is not limited to Bash: Zsh and POSIX shell scripts get the same smart editor. For Zsh, code completion and quick documentation cover its 257 built-in variables, 49 parameter expansion flags and 20 modifiers. Zsh scripts run and debug like any other script, using zshdb.
For both variables and functions, including those in sourced files, BashSupport Pro provides a Go to Declaration and a Find Usages feature.
BashSupport Pro lets you execute Bash script files but also file snippets. All aspects of script execution are defined in run configurations. These also handle automatic path mappings when executing Bash in a Windows environment. You can import and export the run configurations of other Bash plugins.
BashSupport Pro integrates the Bash debugger bashdb into the usual JetBrains debugger interface. This integration comes with conditional breakpoints, variable watch expressions, inlay hints and other goodies. The test framework bats-core is also fully integrated, making it comfortable to define and run your tests.
BashSupport Pro is suitable for complex projects that are developed in heterogeneous teams. Linux, macOS and Windows are all supported. You can share run configurations with anyone in the team, including those using a different OS. And in complex projects, defining a set of Bash scripts as a shell script library simplifies how you enable BashSupport Pro code inspection for your code.
You can try BashSupport Pro for 30 days for free before buying – no registration needed.
Already convinced? Get the plugin on the JetBrains Marketplace.
If you are eligible for free JetBrains licenses, you get the same with BashSupport Pro: open source projects, students etc. get free licenses.
Shell scripts deserve the same tooling as any other language: completion and navigation that follow sourced files, a real debugger instead of set -x, a test runner, and a linter and formatter wired into the editor.
With BashSupport Pro, your JetBrains IDE covers all of it for Bash, Zsh and POSIX scripts, combining bashdb and zshdb debugging, the bats-core test runner, ShellCheck analysis and shfmt formatting in one place.
The feature comparison shows how that stacks up against the alternatives, feature by feature.
BashSupport Pro runs in every JetBrains IDE except Air and the .NET products. That includes IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, PhpStorm, GoLand, CLion, RubyMine, RustRover and DataGrip, in both their free and paid editions. Android Studio is supported too, because it is built on the same platform, even though it is developed by Google rather than JetBrains. See the system requirements for the minimum IDE version.
The bundled JetBrains Shell Script plugin has no debugger, no test runner, no Zsh support, no remote development and no Google Shell Style Guide support. Its run configurations pin one specific interpreter, so they cannot be shared across a team on mixed operating systems. The feature comparison lists every difference side by side.
Yes. A 64-bit version of Windows 7 or later is required, and Windows on ARM64 is supported too. The Bash engines of WSL 2, WSL 1, MSYS Git and Cygwin all work, and BashSupport Pro detects them automatically at the usual installation locations. Run configurations map paths automatically, so the same configuration works for teammates on Linux and macOS.
Yes. The debugger integrates bashdb for Bash and POSIX scripts and zshdb for Zsh scripts into the regular JetBrains debugger UI, with conditional breakpoints, watch expressions and inlay hints. The bats-core test framework is wired into the IDE’s test runner.
Bash, Zsh and POSIX shell scripts. It bundles ShellCheck and shfmt, and integrates bashdb, zshdb and bats-core. Note that ShellCheck itself does not support Zsh, so fewer warnings are shown for Zsh files.
Yes, 30 days, and no registration is needed. If you are eligible for a free JetBrains license, such as open-source maintainers and students, the same applies to BashSupport Pro. See pricing and free licenses.
No. The open-source BashSupport plugin is retired, and BashSupport Pro is its successor, rewritten and far more capable. Run configurations created by the legacy plugin keep working. Everyone who contributed to the old plugin before 2020-02-22 is eligible for a free one-year license.
Are you unsure if BashSupport Pro is for you? Please contact support.
If you like, you could also study the documentation of BashSupport Pro.
Finally a plugin to assist with syntax and debugging bash scripts! My students are ecstatic! After using IDEs for Python and C++ they were horrified to find out that they had to debug ‘unaided’. I just smiled! 😉 Seriously, it REALLY helps to reduce the time to working script AND it even comments on those of us that are old and still using features that are depreciated! I can’t imagine how I ever survived without it!
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