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Tooling

Liferay Developer Studio

Liferay Developer Studio (LDS) is a Liferay-provided integrated development environment (IDE) for Liferay DXP. Built on the Eclipse platform, LDS inherits Eclipse’s security updates and core features and adds specialized tools for Liferay development. LDS ships both as a standalone IDE and as a set of plugins (“Liferay IDE”) you can install into an existing Eclipse environment — the two names refer to the same tooling.

Prerequisites

  • JDK 17 or 21.
  • For the plugin install path, an existing Eclipse environment.

Main Features

LDS streamlines Liferay development with these features and tooling:

  • Liferay Workspace Management: Full support for creating, importing, and managing Liferay Workspaces.
  • Project Wizards: Dedicated wizards for scaffolding OSGi modules, module fragments, REST services, and JSF projects, as well as legacy support for portlets, hooks, and themes.
  • Server Tooling: Built-in connectors for Liferay bundles, Docker integration for local development, and remote deployment capabilities.
  • Developer Productivity:
    • Gogo Shell Terminal: An integrated console for real-time OSGi management via the Gogo Shell.
    • Module Watcher: Automatic redeployment of modules upon saving.
    • Snippet Library: A collection of drag-and-drop code snippets.
  • Specialized Editors:
    • FreeMarker Editor: Advanced editor support for .ftl files, including syntax highlighting and code completion.
    • Service Builder: A visual editor and wizard for defining entities in service.xml and generating service layers.

Release Cadence

Liferay Developer Studio releases generally align with the Liferay DXP quarterly cadence. Each release refreshes compatibility with current Liferay DXP versions, the packaged Blade CLI, and periodically incorporates upstream Eclipse releases.

Release history is published on the Liferay IDE GitHub releases page.

Setting Up Liferay Developer Studio

  1. Navigate to the Liferay IDE releases page.

  2. Select the directory for the latest release version.

  3. Download the LiferayWorkspacewithDevStudio installer for your operating system (-windows-x64-installer.exe, -osx-installer.dmg, or -linux-x64-installer.run/-linux-arm64-installer.run).

    Note

    Each release also ships a smaller LiferayWorkspace-*-installer.* artifact that contains only the workspace tooling (no bundled Eclipse). Use that flavor to install just the workspace tools.

  4. Run the downloaded installer and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation.

  5. Launch Liferay Developer Studio. The Eclipse workspace selector opens.

  6. Select a local directory to serve as your Eclipse workspace and confirm the dialog.

Tip

To install the Liferay IDE plugins into an existing Eclipse environment, open the Eclipse Marketplace, search for Liferay IDE, and drag the Install button from the listing into your running Eclipse instance.

Creating a Liferay Workspace

A Liferay Workspace is the standard environment for building and managing Liferay projects.

  1. Open Liferay Developer Studio.

  2. Go to File → New → Liferay Workspace Project.

  3. Enter a Project name.

  4. Select a Build Tool: Gradle or Maven.

  5. Select the target Liferay Version.

  6. Click Finish.

LDS generates the workspace structure, downloads the configured Liferay bundle and Gradle/Maven dependencies, and opens the project in the Project Explorer.

Liferay Developer Studio puts a Project Explorer, source editor, Gradle Tasks pane, and server console in a single workspace for Liferay DXP development.

Next Steps

With LDS installed and a workspace created, you can:

Installing a Liferay Server in Liferay Developer Studio

Deploying Modules from Liferay Developer Studio

Updating Liferay Developer Studio