IntelliJ Run Configuration Broken by an Incompatible Plugin I Can't Uninstall?

Question

I had been developing an application on a trial version of IntelliJ 2016 Ultimate. Since the trial version ran out, I resumed work using the Community Edition. However, trying to launch my application yielded the following error:

Unknown run configuration type  #com.intellij.j2ee.web.tomcat.TomcatRunConfigurationFactory

"No problem" I thought, just an incompatible plugin that was installed with Ultimate that I don't really need anyway. I opened the Plugins section of the Preferences menu, but I can't find the plugin in question. Below is a partial screenshot of the plugin list where I would expect to see the plugin listed in the error message.

The configuration can also not be edited from the Run/Debug Configurations menu, but lists the Run Configuration error as: "Broken configuration due to unavailable plugin or invalid configuration data."

Am I really unable to uninstall the Ultimate plugin preventing my run configuration from working from the Community Edition? What can I do to fix this if so?

Answer 1

It's have been a long time since this question was launched but it might be useful for new searches. I got the same error with Dart and Flutter. Just go to Menu >> File >> Settings. Then type plugins on the search box. Check if your plugins need to be updated (in my case Dart and Flutter). I the screenshot I had clicked in the "update" green button. So it turns into "Restart IDE" text. It should fix the problem once you restart the IDE.

Answer 2

To the best of my knowledge the community edition of IDEA will not load and run plugins that are not compatible with it. Moreover, by default, the community edition uses a different configuration directory than the Ultimate edition. So unless you modified the config directory to use, the community version should not be picking up the Ultimate Edition's plugins. Based on the error you show, I think the issue is you simply need to delete that Run configuration. The error is saying that that Run configuration wants to use a Plugin (The Tomcat Plugin) that is not available (i.e. not installed).

If you still want to confirm what plugins are installed, you can manually uninstall a plugin by removing it from the plugins directory. Note that some plugins are simply a standalone JAR, in the plugins directory, others are sub-directories within the plugins directory. Just delete the JAR or sub-directory.

That plugins directory is the idea config directory. See Directories used by the IDE to store settings, caches, plugins and logs for information on its location. On windows for example, by default it will be:

• Ultimate: C:\Users\UserName\.IntelliJIdea2016\config\plugins
• Community: C:\Users\UserName\..IdeaIC2016\config\plugins

UPDATE

I forgot to mention... bundled plugins are in ${idea-install-directory}/plugins. So for the ultimate edition, the Tomcat plugin is in ${idea-install-directory}/plugins/Tomcat. That is why, as you mentioned in your comment below, you are not seeing that plugin in the user installed plugin directory I mentioned above.