PhpStorm Booster

A PhpStorm/IntelliJ plugin with tools for better local development practices — focused on taming indexing and cache bloat on large PHP/Magento projects.

Status: 0.1.0 — concept release. Built to validate the idea on real projects. Expect rough edges; see Caveats.

Compatible with PhpStorm 2025.3 (build 253.*).

---

Why

On large Magento/PHP codebases, PhpStorm's indexing causes two recurring pains:

1. Huge generated/vendor folders (var, generated, pub/static, node_modules, …) get indexed on every project, slowing everything down.
2. Index caches grow without bound — repeatedly removing and re-adding vendor/ (e.g. composer install) leaves dead index records behind. The global cache (~/.cache/JetBrains/PhpStorm…/index) can balloon to many GB and eventually destabilize the IDE.

PhpStorm Booster bundles two feature areas to address these.

---

Features

1. Index Blocker

Globally exclude folders from indexing across all projects — configure once, applies everywhere.

• Settings → Tools → Index Blocker
• Three match forms per entry:
  • Exact name — var matches any folder named var at any depth
  • Prefix wildcard — Test* matches Test, Tests, TestUtils, …
  • Relative path — pub/static matches that path under a content root
• Default block list: node_modules, var, generated, dev, pub/static, Test*
• Matched folders show the standard "excluded" mark and are skipped from indexing/search.
• Live refresh when settings change or matching folders appear.

2. Cache Health

Visibility into and control over PhpStorm's cache/index storage.

• Main-toolbar widget showing the live index cache size; click for actions.
• Quick Trim — clears safe-to-reclaim caches (logs immediately; embedded-browser/AI caches scheduled for next restart, since the running IDE locks them).
• Invalidate Caches & Restart — one click, delegates to the native PhpStorm action.
• Size monitor — warns when the index cache exceeds a threshold (default 8 GB), once per session.
• Enforce disabling of downloadable Shared Indexes on every startup (default on).
• Settings → Tools → Cache Health.

---

Install

From a release zip

1. Download phpstorm-booster-<version>.zip (from a CI build artifact or a release).
2. PhpStorm → Settings → Plugins → ⚙ → Install Plugin from Disk… → pick the zip.
3. Restart if prompted.

Build from source

Requires a JDK/JBR 21.

./gradlew buildPlugin
# → build/distributions/phpstorm-booster-<version>.zip

Other useful tasks:

./gradlew test          # unit + light integration tests
./gradlew verifyPlugin   # JetBrains plugin compatibility check
./gradlew runIde         # launch a sandbox PhpStorm with the plugin

---

CI

Every push and pull request builds the plugin and uploads the zip as a workflow artifact — see .github/workflows/build.yml. Download the artifact from the Actions tab of a completed run.

---

Caveats

This is a 0.1.0 concept; known limitations:

• Disabling downloadable Shared Indexes may not shrink the cache and can make local indexing do more work. It's included because it's a deliberate user preference, not because it reduces index/ size. You can turn it off in Cache Health settings.
• Cache Health Quick Trim clears logs/JCEF/AI caches, not the main index/ storage. To reclaim index/ itself, use Invalidate Caches & Restart (rebuilds a compacted index for active projects only).
• Built against the PhpStorm 2023.3 SDK originally, retargeted to 2025.3. Two internal-API usages (AppLifecycleListener.appStarted, delegating to the native invalidate action) produce verifier warnings — non-fatal, slated for cleanup.
• The plugin uses only platform APIs; the code works in any IntelliJ-based IDE, though it's published for PhpStorm.

---

License

Copyright © Qoliber. All rights reserved (license TBD).