IntelliJ: How to create a local Java project copy for backup? - intellij-idea

Question

I'm new to JavaFX 8 and the IntelliJ IDE. I have a JavaFX8 project that works but not as I would like. I'd like to try another approach but the substantial changes may not work. I don't want to loose code I have working.
To save code I have working, I've been creating a new project and then locally copying all the folders(.idea, out, src) and files except .iml, of the working project into the appropriate folders in the new project with the newly generated .iml.
This always seems to work but is it proper procedure?
I'm not on a team of developers and have yet to learn Git/GitHub.
Please advise. Thanks.

Answer 1

Maybe you should learn how to use a Version Control System like Git, then you can create a project repository and have different branches for things you want to try out. Keeping the working code in your master branch will prevent you loosing your working code. Also, when using a vcs you can always revert to versions of your code that have been working. The IntelliJ Idea IDE has perfect support for working with all different types of version control systems. If you don't want to learn any forms of vcs then there is no other way to "backup" your working code.

Answer 2

Is it proper procedure? It's probably not how most people would go about achieving what you want to achieve but it's certainly workable. If you wanted to stick with that for simplicity now, I'd copy the whole directory structure, delete the .idea and .iml files, and then create a new project in IntelliJ on that clean copy: IntelliJ will automatically set up folder structure based on the existing source without you having to go through any additional manual setup.
If you're willing to experiment with the git route, to achieve the basics of what you want to achieve is not very complicated and I've written a small quick-start below. IntelliJ offers very good support for Git, and once your repository is created you can do everything you need from the IDE. I'm going to assume you're working on Windows, although the steps shouldn't be too far removed on other platforms.
Install Git
You can download and install Git from https://git-scm.com/download/win, which will install a command shell called Git Bash.
One-off setup for your project
Open up git bash and go into the directory containing your source. Rather than seeing separate drives as Windows does, Git Bash assumes there is a logical 'root' directory under which all your files are accessible. Your C: drive will be /c. To move around you can use cd to change directory (using / instead of ) and ls to list files instead of using dir.
Assuming your source code is in C:\projects\myproject:
cd /c/projects/myproject
git init
The second line above creates a git repository in that directory. This doesn't affect your code, it just creates a folder called .git that contains all of the book-keeping information.
You don't want to have every file under version control - in particular you don't want your build outputs. You need to set up a file in your project directory called .gitignore which tells git which files and directories should be ignored. As a starting point you can copy https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Java.gitignore and rename the file to .gitignore
Basic Commands and committing your initial version
There are a small number of basic commands:
git status
Running git status will tell you which files have been modified, which are not under version control, and which files have been added to the staging area to be committed next time.
git add path/to/file
This adds a file to the staging area waiting to be committed. You can add multiple files to the staging area before committing them in one go.
git commit -m "description of your change"
This commits all of the staged files as a new version, which the specified commit message.
If you go into your project directory, do a git status and check through the list to make sure there's nothing you don't want to have under version control, then you can do git add . to add everything to the staging area and git commit -m "Check in initial version of the source code" to commit it to the repository.
After you've committed, you can run
git log
To see a history of all of the changes. IntelliJ has a view that will show you the same thing.
Creating an experimental branch
This is where git shines; if you want to try something experimental you can create a branch of your project while allowing git to preserve the original version.
git checkout -b experiment1
Will create and switch to a branch called experiment1. You can delete, rename, move, rewrite and develop whatever you like on this branch. The changes you commit will be independent of your original working version.
You can switch back to your original version (preserving all of the changes you've committed on that branch) using:
git checkout master
Where master is just the name of the default branch created when you ran git init. The experimental version will still be there and can be switched to again using git checkout experiment1 or from IntelliJ using the branch selection in the bottom right corner of the status bar.
If you decide that the changes you've made in experiment1 are to become your new "good" version, you can merge them back into the master branch and repeat the cycle from there.