Ataman - an elected leader of the Cossack troops and settlements

Ataman is an Intellij Idea plugin for using leader key for bindings (almost like in Spacemacs)

Intellij Idea is notorious for its tricky keybindings involving multiple modifiers and F1-F12 keys. Another approach of using Cmd+Shift+A command pallete and search for most of the actions, reducing the speed.

There is another way, popularized by Spacemacs and Doom Emacs – leader (or sticky) keys. It works fairly simple – you choose a combination to use as a leader, e.g. Ctrl-E. After you activate leader, next keys can be simply typed one after another. For example, we can have Ctrl-E c r for opening refactoring menu and Ctrl-E c f to reformat file. With this approach keybindings are easier to type and memorize.

This approach could already be done in IntelliJ using IdeaVim and some tricks. Ataman is independent of your choice to use IdeaVim and works everywhere across Intellij

Install plugin from Jetbrains Marketplace (or build it yourself as shown below). In your keymap settings (Preferences -> Keymap) find and bind Ataman: Leader Key to the shortcut of your choice. When executed first time, the only binding is to open your config. Enjoy!

To use leader key without modifier (e.g. to use SPACE as leader), bind your desired leader key to the Ataman: Transparent Leader Key action and add these lines

nnoremap <Space> :action LeaderAction<cr>
vnoremap <Space> :action LeaderAction<cr>

to your ~/.ideavimrc file. This way leader key will work unless you are entering text anywhere

Your mappings config is located at ~/.atamanrc.config. File is in HOCON format. Suggested style is here:

bindings { # always present
  c { # tree of bindings starting with 'c'
    description: Code...
    bindings {
      # some leaves with actions to call
      r { actionId: RefactoringMenu, description: Refactor this... }
      f { actionId: ReformatCode, description: Reformat code }
      c { # you can nest arbitrary amount of tree groups
        description: Compile/Run...
        bindings { 
          a { actionId: RunAnything, description: Run Anything... }
          r { actionId: ReRun, description: Rerun last build }
        }
        # actionId: ... -- error! do not mix actionId and bindings clause together! 
      }
    }
  }
}

You can look at my own config here for more examples

This repo uses gradle-intellij-plugin for building. To build plugin, use this command:

./gradlew buildPlugin

For more advanced usecases, please refer to gradle-intellij-plugin documentation.

This project is distributed under MIT License. Please refer to LICENSE.txt for details.