Ever wondered how IDE’s are built? In this talk, we’ll skip the marketing bit and dive into the architecture and implementation of JetBrains Rider. We’ll look at how and why we have built (and open sourced) a reactive protocol, and how the IDE uses a “microservices” architecture to communicate with the debugger, Roslyn, a WPF renderer and even other tools like Unity3D. We’ll explore how things are wired together, both in-process and across those microservices. Let’s geek out!

1. Microservices for building an IDE
The innards of JetBrains Rider
Maarten Balliauw
@maartenballiauw

2. JetBrains Rider
demo

3. Rider
Cross-platform, full-stack .NET IDE
C#, VB.NET, F#, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, Xamarin, Unity, WinForms, WPF, …
.NET full framework, .NET Core, Mono
Lightweight, fast & yet a complete IDE!
Helps you be more productive
Editor, code assistance, navigation, refactoring
ReSharper built-in
NuGet, unit testing, DB tools, source control, REST client, …
Tons of plugins!
Free trial! www.jetbrains.com/rider

4. History

5. JetBrains
Founded 2000 in Prague (Czech Republic)
2000 IntelliJ Renamer
2001 IntelliJ
2004 ReSharper
2019 20+ IDE’s and other developer tools

7. ReSharper IDE
Project halted (but not gone to waste)
Several concepts and architecture remained
Keep functionality separate from the actual IDE
Same core, IDE interoperability layer on top
Visual Studio 2010, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019
ReSharper command line tools (CLI)

8. “When will JetBrains come
with its own .NET IDE?”

9. Why build a .NET IDE?
Many reasons!
“When will JetBrains come with its own .NET IDE?”
ReSharper constrained by Visual Studio environment
32 bit process resource constraints
Changes in VS impact ReSharper
.NET Core
No good cross-platform IDE existed at the time

10. Cross-platform...
A cross-platform UI toolkit is needed!
ReSharper UI elements in WinForms and WPF
Existing ReSharper UI would need converting, new UI to be built
WinForms? (Mono sort of has it)
GTKSharp?
Qt?

11. IntelliJ Platform
Foundation of all of our IDE’s
Provides base infrastructure
Project view, code completion, UI toolkit
+ Platform plugins such as version control, terminal, ...
+ JetBrains <product name> IDE plugins
Open source (build your own IDE – e.g. Android Studio, Comma IDE & others)
https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community
Windows, Linux, Mac – already cross-platform thanks to JVM

12. IntelliJ Platform + R# ?
IntelliJ Platform
Great foundation to build on
Windows, Linux, Mac
JVM
ReSharper (R#)
All of those .NET inspections, refactorings, code generation, project model, ...
.NET

13. Options!
Rewrite R# in Java?
14 years of implementation and knowledge
Would bring 2 R# implementations... Automatic conversion?
Run R# as a command-line process
Already possible (thanks, 2004!)
“Just need our own UI on top”

14. IntelliJ Platform + R# !
Headless R# as a language server
Cross-platform (.NET / Mono)
No constraints
It is ReSharper! 2 products, 1 code base
IntelliJ as a thin UI
Control the R# process

15. Both sides are an IDE...
Is IntelliJ really a thin UI?
Three cases...
Features where IJ handles everything
Features where R# handles almost everything
Features where both IDE’s make a more awesome IDE

16. 1 + 1 = 3
demo

17. How to make them talk?
Inter-process communication

18. Example: Context actions (Alt+Enter)
1. IntelliJ provides text editor, caret(s) and lets us Alt+Enter
2. Ask current document’s language for items to display in Alt+Enter menu
For C#, this language is a facade to the R# process
3. IntelliJ renders list of items, may add its own entries
Data: a tree of names and icons

19. 1. IntelliJ provides text editor and plumbing to display squiggles
2. IntelliJ notifies R# that a document was opened (or modified)
3. R# does its thing (analyze, inspect, summarize that data)
4. R# publishes this to IntelliJ
5. IntelliJ displays this info
Data: a set of name, icon, severity, tooltip, text range
Can’t do RPC! Analysis can take any amount of time, so IJ should not wait for it.
~~~~~~
Example: Inspections and highlighting

20. 1. Bi-directional
User can be typing
A refactoring or completion may be injecting code at the same time
2. Can be implemented with delta’s
IntelliJ pushes delta to R#
R# pushes delta to IntelliJ
Concurrency?
Data: a delta (from line + column, to line + column, text to insert)
Example: Writing code

21. Types of data
Context actions
A tree of names and icons
Inspections
A set of name, icon, severity, tooltip, text range
Writing code
Delta with from line + column, to line + column, text to insert
Fairly simple messages! Can we make this generic enough?
Make one inspection work  make them all work

22. Which protocol do we use?
Re-use Language Server Protocol (LSP)?
Great in itself – IDE concepts like window, editor, language, diagnostics, ...
We would need customizations for R# feature set
Or build a custom REST-like protocol?
Experimented with JSON, ProtoBuf, request/response style

23. Request-action-response
LSP and custom protocol are request/response mostly
Conflict resolution...
What if both human and a refactoring make a change to code?
How to keep things synchronized and in a healthy state?
Realization: Why a “request-action-response” flow? Why RPC?
Both IDE’s share a similar model and architecture
Messages are simple, but for RPC they would need context
(which solution, which file, state info, ...) – overhead!

24. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)
IntelliJ is our view, ReSharper provides the model
Protocol is the ViewModel, sharing lightweight data
Project.Files.Add("Foo.cs")
Project.Files["Foo.cs"].Inspections.Add(
"Possible null reference", "Warning", 20, 30, 20, 42);
Both processes can react to such change (observable + observer)

25. Conflict resolution...
Changes to data in shared model can come from IJ and R#
Can still cause conflicts due to features or timing/GC issues
IntelliJ: “I just deleted file foo.cs”
R#: “I just refactored foo.cs”
Solutions!
Locking? (freezes, how to handle deadlocks?)
Conventions!

26. Conflict conventions!
View + Model (or client: IntelliJ + server: ReSharper)
Each value stored in the view model has a version
Updates by the view/client increment the version
Updates by the model/server do not
Only accept changes if version is the same or newer
If not, the change is discarded

27. Rider protocol

28. Obligatory diagram
Ideally, our developers do not have
to know the details of this.
Just create view models.

29. Rider protocol
“Reactive Distributed communication framework for .NET, Kotlin, JS, C++”
Open source - https://github.com/jetbrains/rd
1. Include protocol libraries
and build tools on all sides
2. Write view model in special DSL
3. Generate code
4. Work with generated model
.NET/Kotlin/JS/... code generator
Model definition DSL
Primitives
Conflict resolution, serialization, ...
Sockets, batching, binary wire protocol

30. Rider protocol
Only need to know about a few primitives
Conflict resolution, wire protocol, timeouts, ... handled by protocol
Code generated based on the defined view model
Bonus points: no reflection/introspection needed on every run
Hierarchical + lifetimes

31. Signal (event)
Producers/subscribers
Observable/observer
Using lifetime to manage subscription
// Produce event
interface ISource<T> {
void Fire(T value);
}
// Subscribe to event
interface ISink<T> {
void Advise(Lifetime l, Action<T> handler);
}
// Event
interface ISignal<T> : ISource<T>, ISink<T> { }

32. Property
Signal implementation
Using lifetime to manage subscription
To changes to propery in general
To changes to specific value
// Observable property
interface IProperty<T> : ISink<T> {
T Value { get; set; }
void Advise(Lifetime l, Action<T> handler);
void View(Lifetime l, Action<Lifetime, T> handler);
}

33. Primitives
Primitive Description
Signal Event that is fired when something happens
Property Observable value
List/set/map Observable collections
Field Immutable value
Call/callback RPC-style call, needed from time to time
byte, short, int, long, float,
double, char, boolean, string,
securestring, void, enum, ...
Primitives and special types
Aggregatedef/classdef/structdef A node in the viewmodel

34. Hierarchical + lifetimes
Cleanup and resource management
Objects attach to lifetime
Lifetime destroys attached objects
Parent lifetime destroys children
NuGet: JetBrains.Lifetimes
public class Lifetime : IDisposable {
private Stack<Action> resources = new Stack<Action>();
public void Attach(Action resource) {
resources.Push(resource);
}
public void Attach(IDisposable disposable) {
resources.Push(disposable.Dispose);
}
public void Dispose() {
while (resources.Count > 0) {
var resource = resources.Pop();
resource();
}
}
}

35. Hierarchical + lifetimes
Solution
NuGet host
Project
Document
Inspections
PSI (Program Structure Interface)
Class
Field
Method
Document
Inspections
...
Project
Local history
NuGet tool window
Project
Editor tab
Inspections
Language
Editor tab
Inspections
Language
viewmodel(Riderprotocol)

36. Rider protocol
demo

37. Rider protocol
Very extensible through Kotlin-based DSL
Easy to work with for our developers
Update view model, generate code, work with generated code
Find Usages, Navigation, ... work while crafting model
No need to think about multiple processes, state, conflict resolution, ...
Cross-language, cross-platform
Plugin model for Rider is more complex (IJ and R# parts may be needed)
https://github.com/JetBrains/fsharp-support
https://github.com/JetBrains/resharper-unity

38. Microservices

39. Two processes!
Isolation!
Each has their own 64 bit memory space
Also their own, separate GC
Multi-core machines
Start/stop independently

40. Debugging? Four processes.
Rider (IntelliJ + ReSharper)
Debugger worker process
Your application

41. Multiple processes...
What if certain features were
running in their own process?
No need to run all the time
Own memory constraints
Start/stop/crash independently

42. Shared view model
Pass around a shared view model
to interested parties
Example: Roslyn analyzers/inspections
Pass around “reference” of
[
{ name, icon, severity,
tooltip, text range }
]

43. Shared view model

44. Multiple machines
Socket-based wire protocol
Sockets can be on multiple machines
Example:
Docker debugging
Remote debugging

45. Unity game engine
www.unity3d.com
Extension to view model
Rider plugin
Unity editor plugin
https://github.com/JetBrains/resharper-unity
https://twitter.com/kskrygan/status/1064950644094705664

46. https://twitter.com/kskrygan/status/1064950644094705664

47. Future

48. Model the view as well
public CSharpInteractiveOptionsPage(Lifetime lifetime, ...)
: base(lifetime, ...) {
AddHeader("Tool settings");
AddToolPathFileChooserOption(lifetime, commonFileDialogs);
AddEmptyLine();
AddStringOption((CSIOptions s) => s.ToolArguments,
"Tool arguments:", "Additional tool arguments");
AddHeader("Tool window behavior");
AddBoolOption((CSIOptions s) => s.FocusOnOpenToolWindow,
"Focus tool window on open");
AddBoolOption((CSIOptions s) => s.FocusOnSendLineText,
"Focus tool window on Send Line");
AddBoolOption((CSIOptions s) => s.MoveCaretOnSendLineText,
"Move caret down on Send Line");
// ...
FinishPage();
}

49. Multiple machines
WPF on macOS/Linux
Rendering on Windows
Front-end on one machine,
back-end on another
...

50. Every IDE as both a client and server
Front-end and back-end: separate process & memory
Whatever happens in the backend, the frontend can process the user's typing
Bring this technology to other IDE’s?
Reuse WebStorm's HTML/CSS/JS functionality in ReSharper
(e.g. Visual Studio + R# using WebStorm in back-end mode)

51. Summary

52. Conclusion
Rider is an IDE built on
two IDE’s
two technology stacks
Rich and easy programming model was needed to bridge the two
Protocol gave rise to
more than two processes
more than one machine
micro UI
Free trial! www.jetbrains.com/rider

53. Thank you!
https://blog.maartenballiauw.be
@maartenballiauw