UPD: we have found the first candidate who is ready to take the ownership of the plugin. However if you are interested in to take another plugin, please let me know via email (mikhail.veselov@jetbrains.com) and we will try to find another one. Thank you!
Hello everyone,
PyCharm previously had a plugin providing support for reStructuredText files.
Unfortunately, JetBrains has discontinued active maintenance of the plugin, and it’s now unmaintained.
Given that .rst remains a key format in the Python documentation ecosystem, we’d like to see this plugin live on.
We’re currently seeking developers or organizations interested in the maintenance and further development of the ReStructuredText plugin.
If you are interested, please send me a message to mikhail.veselov@jetbrains.com to discuss the opportunities and next steps.
I would like to propose an alternative: Create a new plugin for the rST language server Esbonio. Better yet, since 2025.3 EAP 6 added native support for Ruff, ty, BasedPyright and Pyrefly, it might as well support Esbonio. Someone asked for this two years ago.
A small catch is that there will need to be a “preview” feature, something LSP does not have (the VS Code extension implements its own).
I’m aware LSP is not a replacement for native features. Regardless, this will be far cheaper a solution than rewriting the old plugin from scratch.
I’d personally love to see JetBrains hand the source for the Mermaid plugin over to the community for maintenance (I’m a very active user of Markdown and Mermaid) - I wonder if the community got a “two for one” deal (that is, took over maintenance of both restructuredtext and Mermaid; both of which are docs-related plugins) you’d find more folks interested. At the very least, I’d be more inclined to raise my hand - a lot of the plugins I’ve authored haven’t had new features in a while, but I’ve been maintaining them and trying my best to keep them up-to-date with the latest releases.
The plugin has been very useful, but over time it became clear that our teams wouldn’t be able to give it the attention and care it deserves. Rather than letting it go stale, it’d be best to pass it on to someone from the community who’s closer to this area and can help it grow further.
As for the Mermaid plugin - I talked internally, and unfortunately, this plugin can’t be transferred outside the JB. The plugin’s code includes parts that can’t be open-sourced or shared. Sorry, but the Marketplace and Platform teams can’t help with this one
At this point, I’m 8 languages deep on a new mermaid plugin built from scratch with the latest version of mermaid.js. Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure on FOSS vs freemium at the moment.
The current feature set looks something like:
GrammarKit highlighting for each diagram type (currently structured as separate languages that are injected alongside yaml frontmatter into a top level mermaid language)
Named references with inline refactoring for many diagram types where relevant
JSONSchema validation for frontmatter based on the file’s diagram type
Live preview
Rendering mermaid diagrams in Markdown code fences (jetbrains folks, please don’t kill me for using the internal fenceGeneratingProvider extension point )
Context menu actions to either a diagram or copy it the clipboard as an SVG file
An extension point for other developers to hook into my plugin’s mermaid rendering capability to obtain or save rendered diagrams for their own purposes.
I haven’t started on language-specific keyword/value completions, but it’s on the “roadmap.”
All that to say this isn’t the end of the road for mermaid support in IntelliJ.
I think putting together a group to gather feedback/feature requests is a good idea. Probably not this week, but maybe by next week I’ll be ready to spin up some sort of distribution for pre-release builds.
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