Seeking Clarity on the JetBrains Remote Development Ecosystem: Client, Gateway, Code With Me, and the Future Roadmap

IntelliJ Platform
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Hi, everyone

I’m finding myself increasingly confused by the remote development landscape. I’m hoping to get some clarification on the various tools and the overall product strategy, as it’s become difficult to distinguish between them.

Here are the main points of my confusion:

  1. A Sea of Terminology: I’m struggling to understand the precise difference and relationship between JetBrains Client , IntelliJ Remote Development , Code With Me , and JetBrains Gateway . They seem to overlap, and I’m not sure when to use which or how they fit together. and RemDev?

  2. Confusing Entry Points: The user experience for launching remote sessions adds to the confusion. For instance, I can launch the JetBrains Client through the JetBrains Gateway , but I can also launch it directly from the Toolbox App . This makes it unclear what the intended workflow is.

  3. The Future of JetBrains Client: I’m seeing conflicting signals about the future of the JetBrains Client. On one hand, I found a YouTrack ticket titled “Get rid of JetBrains Client” (IJPL-169047), which suggests it might be sunset. On the other hand, JetBrains is actively releasing new, client-specific plugins.

  4. A Three-Track Product Line? The recent release of plugins like "Python for JetBrains Client " (link) makes me wonder if JetBrains is moving towards three distinct product lines with separate plugin ecosystems:

  • The traditional, full desktop IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, etc.).

  • The thin JetBrains Client.

  • The Fleet (maybe dead now? seems no any release published any more, and I heard the fleet team already moved on to a Gen AI project.).

Is this an accurate assumption? Will JetBrains Client work with Fleet？:joy:

  1. Critical Missing Features: A major issue for me is that the JetBrains Client still does not support paid plugins . This has been a long-standing issue, tracked in tickets GTW-2304 and IJPL-171075.

  2. What is CodeCanvas? I’ve also seen the term CodeCanvas emerge. From a plugin developer’s perspective, is this the same as the JetBrains Client, or is it something entirely new?

Could someone from the JetBrains team or an experienced community member help clarify the vision for these tools? Specifically:

  • What is the intended role for each of these products (Gateway, Client, Code With Me)?

  • Is the JetBrains Client a long-term part of the strategy, or is it being phased out?

  • What is the plan for unifying the plugin ecosystem, especially regarding paid plugin support on the JetBrains Client?

  • How does CodeCanvas fit into this picture?

  • And intellij-platform-gradle-plugin seems not support JetBrains Client(it even claim that support Fleet.)

  • Can we make all of this as simple as vs-code’s remote-SSH ?

Thank you for your help in understanding this complex ecosystem.

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I would really love to understand this better as well. My basic understanding is that all the remote dev configurations (Gateway Remote dev, Code with Me) are fundamentally similar and use the same technologies - a headless IDE running on a server, and the JetBrains client talking to it over the RD protocol, and using Projector for UI streaming.

I’d also like to better understand the details for plugins which need to work in remote dev settings:

  1. Can we use the RD protocol explicitly, for things like REPLs running on the server, so we can stream the responses to the client?
  2. I believe it’s now possible to separate plugins into two parts, one for the client and one for the server. Is this correct? How should we package and publish them, if so? Do we need to publish separate server and client plugins, as well as a combined one for non-remote-dev situations?
  3. I saw something recently, but I can’t remember where, saying that it was possible in a plugin to detect if it’s running on the frontend or the backend (or in split mode in general, perhaps), but that those APIs were marked internal. When will this be possible?

Users have been asking me about this for a while now, so any guidance would be gratefully received.

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Hey, folks. Thanks for rising questions!

A Sea of Terminology:

  1. We’re working on unifying technologies and terminology, so these aspects will become an essential implementation detail in all JetBrains IDEs. Code With Me remains a bit separate, as it’s the name of the plugin specifically supporting collaborative programming.

Confusing Entry Points:

  1. At the moment, the Toolbox App is the recommended entry point for remote development connections. In the future, both the Toolbox App and IDEs will be more tightly integrated.

The Future of JetBrains Client

  1. -4. JBC will be removed from the terminology list.
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  1. Critical Missing Features: A major issue for me is that the JetBrains Client still does not support paid plugins . This has been a long-standing issue, tracked in tickets GTW-2304 and IJPL-171075.

It’s planned for 2025.3

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I’d only provide a short answer. We’re working on plugin development experience for remote development. Targeting 25.3 / 26.1. It will contain possibility to mark which parts of plugin should be run where, transport protocol, documentation, plugin template.

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with 2025.3 nearing release (I think) - is there any news on this? Will the plugin remote dev stuff be included in 2025.3?

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