ForgeGradle vs IntelliJ IDEA

ForgeGradle is a free Gradle plugin and Minecraft mod development framework used with Forge and FML. Its documentation focuses on setting up a mod development environment, not teaching Java, Groovy or Gradle. Setup requires a Java Development Kit and familiarity with an integrated development environment. The guide provides commands to generate run configurations for Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. Configurations can specify arguments, working directories, task names, environment properties and system properties; Forge supplies client, server, data and gameTestServer run types. Developers can select human-readable mappings and use a reobf task to convert a mod JAR to SRG mappings for production. Dependencies can be sourced from repositories or a local flat directory and wrapped with fg.deobf. An optional Jar-in-Jar system bundles selected dependencies and records metadata during the build. The documentation covers Minecraft versions 1.12 through 1.19, plus 1.19.4. Its default stable and snapshot mappings are typically incomplete and are no longer available as of Minecraft 1.17. The repository identifies the license as LGPL-2.1.

IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE for professional Java and Kotlin development, available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It offers context-aware completion, static analysis, and automated refactoring. The JVM debugger includes breakpoints, variable inspection, expression evaluation, and step-by-step execution. Gradle and Maven integrations cover building, packaging, testing, and deployment, while version-control support includes Git, Mercurial, Perforce, and Subversion. Users can process GitHub pull requests in the IDE, and plugins from JetBrains Marketplace add support for other languages, frameworks, and technologies. Core Java and Kotlin functionality remains free after the included 30-day Ultimate trial ends. The Ultimate subscription adds advanced tools and integrations and costs $100.00 for the first year, $199.00 for the second year, and $159.00 per year from the third year onward. Listed minimum hardware is a 4-core x86_64 or arm64 CPU, 8 GB total RAM, and 10 GB of disk space. Users can choose in IDE settings whether to share anonymous usage data.