Install, configure and run JetBrains IDEs with Projector Server on Linux or in WSL.

The development of JetBrains Projector as its own standalone product has been suspended. That said, Projector remains an important part of JetBrains Gateway, which is the primary remote development tool for JetBrains IDEs. We will focus our efforts on improving and developing Projector in this limited scenario.

Our goal is to provide a rich, full-featured remote development experience with a look and feel that is equal to or better than what you get when working with IDEs locally. The only way to get everything you’re used to having when working locally (low latency, low network traffic, user-defined and OS-specific shortcuts, themes, settings migrations, ssh-agent/port forwarding, and other things) is by installing a dedicated client-side application. The standalone version of Projector is not capable of meeting these goals.

As a result, we no longer recommend using the standalone version of JetBrains Projector or merely making tweaks to incorporate it into your existing IDE servers. We won’t provide user support or quick-fixes for issues that arise when these setups are used. If you have the option to switch from Projector to Gateway, we strongly recommend you do so.

Learn more about JetBrains Gateway

Latest release | Sources | Changelog

1. Installation
2. Quick start
3. FAQ
   1. Secure connection
   2. projector-installer config directory
   3. Android Studio support
   4. projector command is unavailable
   5. WSL issues
   6. projector exits immediately
   7. Using Projector as systemd service
   8. Change existing configuration
   9. projector config update does not work
   10. FreeBSD support
   11. OpenBSD support
   12. I edited the config file manually but nothing changed
   13. Self-generated certificate is expired

To use projector-installer you need machine with Linux (or WSL) and with Python 3.6 or higher. Before install projector-installer make sure that:

1. python3, pip3 and necessary packages are installed in your system. In Debian-based distributions you can install them using the command:

   sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-cryptography python3-netifaces -y

   In CentOS use commands:

   # CentOS 8+
   sudo dnf install python3 python3-pip python3-pyOpenSSL python3-cryptography python3-netifaces -y
   # CentOS 7 / Amazon Linux 2
   sudo yum install python3 python3-pip pyOpenSSL python-cryptography -y

2. Update pip.

   For Debian-based distributions run

   python3 -m pip install -U pip 

   For CentOS use command:

   python3 -m pip install -U pip --user 

3. Make sure that you have installed the following packages:

• less

• libxext6

• libxi6

• libxrender1

• libxtst6

• libfreetype6

  For Debian-based distributions you can install them using the command:

  sudo apt install less libxext6 libxrender1 libxtst6 libfreetype6 libxi6 -y  

  For CentOS use command:

  sudo yum install less libXext libXrender libXtst libXi freetype -y  

You can install projector-installer script from PyPi, using command:

pip3 install projector-installer --user

projector script will be installed in ~/.local/bin directory. To make it available on Debian-based systems run:

source ~/.profile 

for CentOS run:

source ~/.bash_profile

The command projector should be available now.

NOTE: If it is not so, please refer to the appropriate section in the FAQ.

NOTE: projector script checks for updates on start. If a new version is available, you can install an update using command pip3 install projector-installer --upgrade --user

The first time you run projector, it will automatically download, install, configure and start IDE. Just run projector and follow the instructions. The script will run the installed IDE with projector-server and display URLs to access it. Open a URL in your browser and use IDE as usual.

To run IDE again use projector run

To install a new IDE run projector install

To find out which JetBrains IDEs are supported, run projector find

To get help projector commands run projector --help

If you want to know more on projector usage please refer to this file.

SECURITY WARNING: Keep your projector config directory safe when using domain certificate and private key! Do not share its content with anybody!

Installer is able to make run config use HTTPS for accessing a built-in HTTP server and WSS to communicate with the Projector server. Using a secure connection may be a good idea because some JavaScript features are not available in insecure environments, for example: Asynchronous Clipboard API. So using Projector with insecure protocols may limit its functionality.

To enable this feature user should modify existing run config with install-certificate command.

There are several options:

1. Use certificate for the domain signed by known certification center. For this case use command:

projector install-certificate config_name --certificate /path/to/cert.pem --key /path/to/privatekey.pem

In rare cases this command may fail, if installer is not able to obtain full certificate chain. In this case user should provide intermediate certificate chain explicitly, using command

projector install-certificate config_name --certificate /path/to/cert.pem --key /path/to/privatekey.pem --chain /path/to/chain.pem

Note: Do not forget to use domain name or IP address, included to certificate to access Projector.

2. Use self-signed certificate. For this scenario use command:

projector install-certificate config_name --certificate /path/to/cert.pem --key /path/to/privatekey.pem

Do not forget to add the certificate to your browser if it was not done before.

3. Instruct the installer to autogenerate certificate for you. For this scenario, just don't include certificate and key files to install-certificate command:

projector install-certificate config_name

Using a secure connection with autogenerated certificate requires telling the browser that it should trust the certificate. One of the ways to do it is to do it forcefully. Open the page, see the warning about unknown certificate, find a button like "trust it anyway", and click it. After it, you will probably get a message like "can't connect to wss://host:port". Please change wss to https, open it in a new tab, and click the "trust" button too. After performing these two actions, the browser should remember this connection and you won't have to perform these actions again. Just open the initial web page and use all functionality of Projector.

projector-installer keeps downloaded IDE and run configurations in the configuration directory. Usually configuration directory is ~/.projector. User can specify another location for it, using option --config-directory, for example: projector --config-directory=config run

Projector installer can't support automatic Android Studio installation due to legal issues. However, installer can help you to configure already installed Android Studio to use with Projector. To make new run config for Android Studio use the projector config add command.

NOTE: Please take into account, that Projector uses JVM, bundled with IDE and supports Java 11 only. Most of Android Studio IDE shipped with Java 1.8, so they are incompatible with Projector. However, starting from version 4.2 (still in EAP), Google ships Java 11 with Android Studio. So Android Studio ver. 4.2 and later can be run with projector.

Example:

$projector config add
Enter a new configuration name: AndroidStudio
Do you want to choose a Projector-installed IDE? [y/n]: n
Enter the path to IDE: /path/to/your/android-studio
...

Default instruction installs projector script in directory ~/.local/bin. If system can't find the script after installation it means that the directory ~/.local/bin was not included in the PATH environment variable. Try the following:

• Restart the terminal. If projector was the first executable installed in ~/.local/bin, and the directory wasn't exist when your login session started, it may help.

• In some Linux distributions the directory ~/.local/bin not included in the PATH environment variable. In this case add export PATH=${PATH}:~/.local/bin to your ~/.profile
  and run source ~/.profile.

WSL is new technology and sometimes there are problems with network interfaces forwarding from Linux to Windows system. For example: microsoft/WSL#4636 .

If you have issues with accessing Projector running in WSL from the browser, try the following:

• Do not use several WSL machines in the same time. Connectivity issues rarely happens if only one WSL machine is running. You can check state of existing WSL machines using wsl -l -v command.

• Try command Get-Service LxssManager | Restart-Service in PowerShell console

• Restart your WSL environment: wsl --shutdown and start your linux console again.

WARNING! The wsl --shutdown command will close all Linux consoles. Save your work before stopping WSL!

• Using docker service with WSL2 backend can cause connectivity issues. Try to disable it and restart WSL terminal.

• Use address other than localhost. Usually WSL have problems forwarding localhost interface only. Try to use listening address other than localhost. You can assign HTTP listening address during initial installation or using projector config edit command.

• Make sure that you installed all packages mentioned in Prerequisites section.
• Check log-file (it's location shown in console when installer runs the config).
• Make sure that there is no another instance of same config running.

Straightforward creating systemd service to automatically start Projector in the background, lead to projector zombie process. You can avoid this using projector generated run script instead of using projector run command. For details refer to the answer of this issue.

To change run config (for example - change listening port or access password) use command

projector config edit

Probably your run configuration uses "tested" update channel. Try change update channel to not_tested. You can inspect view update channel using projector config show command and change it via projector config edit.

projector-installer since ver. 1.1.0 has FreeBSD support. To run Projector on FreeBSD perform the following steps (tested on FreeBSD-RELEASE 12.2):

• install python 3.7 with necessary packages:

sudo pkg install python37
sudo pkg install py37-pip
sudo pkg install py37-cryptography 

• install openjdk11:

sudo pkg install openjdk11

Do not forget add to fstab fdeskfs and procfs:

fdesk /dev/fd fdeskfs rw  0 0
proc  /proc   procfs  rw  0 0

and mount them:

mount -a

• install projector-installer from sources as described here

pip may fire several warning messages on incompatible cryptography module. You can safely ignore them.

• add ~/.local/bin directory to PATH variable.

• run projector as usual

projector-installer since ver. 1.1.0 has OpenBSD support. To run Projector on OpenBSD perform the following steps (tested on OpenBSD 6.8):

• it is expected, that filesets xbase, xfont, xserv and xshare are already installed in your system. If it is not so add them as described here: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#FilesNeeded

• install python 3.7 or later:

doas pkg_add python

• install pip:

doas pkg_add py3-pip    

Do not forget to make the symbolic link for installed pip to /usr/local/bin/pip.

• install py3-cryptography:

doas pkg_add py3-cryptography

• install openjdk11

doas pkg_add jdk

Do not forget to define JAVA_HOME variable and add $JAVA_HOME/bin to PATH variable.

• install projector-installer from sources as described here or install from pypi using

pip install projector-installer

• add ~/.local/bin directory to PATH variable.

• run projector as usual

It's not recommended to manually modify config file. Please use the projector config edit command. But, if you edited config.ini file, do not forget to run projector config rebuild command to apply manual changes to runconfig.

To generate new certificate run projector config rebuild command for desired config.