How do I use PyCharm and WebStorm in the same project simultaneously?

Question

I am working on a Django project using React for some aspects and seeing that I have licenses for both WebStorm and PyCharm, I would like to use both.

If I open them simultaneously, they keep having to reload the project. More specifically every time one of the IDEs receives focus, it prompts me to reload the project iff, the other IDE received focus since the last window switch. I suspect this is because they are using the same folder (i.e. {project_root}/.idea) to store there cache/shelved changes etc.

Were can I change the setting, where these infos are stored in order to allow both IDEs to function alongside each other?

Answer 1

Idea-based IDEs (WebStorm, PyCharm, PHPStorm, IDEA, etc) have the same project format (.idea) but different settings/module types that aren't always compatible, plus each IDE needs to write its stuff to project files (for example, .idea/workspace.xml is updated each time you open editor tab, etc., as information about recently opened files, cursor positions, etc. is stored there), so having the project opened in 2 IDEs at the same time will cause such issues. If you like to work on the same sources in different IDEs, I'd suggest sharing the sources folder(s) but keeping the .idea folders separated: just create a new empty WebStorm project in preferred WebStorm-specific location and add your shared sources root as additional content root to it in Settings | Directories, Add Content root. Same thing should be done for PyCharm. As a result, you will have IDE-specific .idea folders and shared sources