what makes a variable be visible (intellij idea)

Question

With intellij idea, how do I find out what makes a variable be visible?

An example of when it is hard:

• Suppose you look at class A, and you see a variable something. If you jump to source you see that it's defined in trait X. But you don't extend trait X directly. What do you extend, then, that makes this variable visible? If you have a deeply nested hierarchy, tracking can be hard.

Any recommendations or solutions?

EDIT: Please vote for the feature if you're interested: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-124369

Answer 1

I don't think that IntelliJ IDEA has any shortcut for "finding what makes a variable visible".

However you can determine it using the "Find Usages" option (Alt + F7). For example:

import java.nio._ object TempObj extends App {    def func = 2    val p = file.Paths.get("some-path")    func } 

So Find Usages on "file", tells you that its from the Package "file" (in heading of the new Tab it also shows the complete package name, ex: Find Usages of java.nio.file in Project Files). Whereas Find Usages on func will tell you that its a Method (And the Tab heading now says: Find Usages of func() in Project and Libraries)

So now in way you can determine, what exactly makes the variable visible. This also works for imports since it shows the package from which it is imported and you can then look for import of that packages.