Fixed ‘View Javadoc in external Browser’ in IntelliJ IDEA
An annoyance in IntelliJ IDEA was that the command ‘View Javadoc in external Browser’ did not work
per default on a mac. On a mac with it’s own java sources the api-doc are located inside a jar and therefore
not able to browse through a normal webbrowser. (If you know a browser which can handle a jar://xxx address let me now in a comment)
IntelliJ does not open or extract those files per default so I did by hand with:
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home
jar xf docs.jar // this will extract the contents of the jar
jar xf appledocs.jar // dito
No we need to point IntelliJ to the extracted files. Open your Preferences -> Project Preferences.
Click on the desired JDK and then click on the tab ‘javadocs’. Remove the old entries for the jar and enter
the extracted path
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/docs/api
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/appledocs/api
Not it works. To test it, move the cursor to a class,member whatever and press <Shift>+<F1>. The appropriate javadoc should open in your default browser.
This is not a bug fix, just a bad default configuration. I’d like to see this fixed in the next release…