Contributor setup

Set up a local plugin-development environment and verify the plugin in PyCharm’s IDE sandbox.

Prerequisites

• PyCharm 2026.1 or newer
• JDK 21
• Network access for the first Gradle dependency resolution
• IntelliJ IDEA or PyCharm with Plugin DevKit support

Set up the project

1. Clone the Blender Development repository.
2. Open it as a Gradle project.
3. Allow Gradle to resolve the IntelliJ Platform dependencies.
4. Compile the Kotlin sources:

./gradlew compileKotlin --no-daemon

The build packages the Python runtime automatically before processing plugin resources.

Run the plugin

./gradlew runIde

In the sandbox PyCharm instance, confirm that you can access:

• Project Blender Manager
• Settings > Tools > Blender Development
• The Blender run configuration type
• The Blender Project project generator

Validate changes

Run the baseline checks before submitting a change:

./gradlew compileKotlin --no-daemon
./gradlew test --no-daemon

Tip

Use ./gradlew tasks --all to inspect available build and packaging tasks.