Launch Pycharm from command line (terminal)

Question

I want to try out PyCharm for sage mathematics development. Normally I run eclipse to do sage development, but now I want to try it with PyCharm.

To launch eclipse with sage environment variables, in command line I normally do the following:

sage -sh
cd /path/to/eclipse
./eclipse

The first line loads the sage environment variables, the remainder launches eclipse. How can I do the same thing for pyCharm? (note I am using a Mac and Ubuntu for sage development; the commands above are agnostic to both OSes)

1. Link 1 is close to the solution I am looking for, however I cannot find a pyCharm.sh anywhere.
2. Link 2: Jetbrains does not give clear instructions either.

Answer 1

I normally alias using built-in application launcher (open) from OS X:

alias pc='open -a /Applications/PyCharm\ CE.app'

Then I can type:

pc myfile1.txt myfiles*.py

Though you can't (easily) pass args to PyCharm, if you want a quick way to open files (without needing to use full pathnames to the file), this does the trick.

Answer 2

Useful information for some:

On Linux, installing PyCharm as a snap package automatically creates the command-line launcher named pycharm-professional, pycharm-community, or pycharm-educational. The Tools | Create Command-line Launcher command is therefore not available.

Answer 3

open /Applications/PyCharm\ CE.app/ opens up the primary Pycharm Dialogue box to choose the project..

worked for me with macOS 10.13.6 & Pycharm 2018.1

Answer 4

Update

It is now possible to create command line launcher automatically from JetBrains Toolbox. This is how you do it:

1. Open up the toolbox window;
2. Go to the gear icon in the upper right (the settings window for toolbox itself);
3. Turn on Generate shell scripts;
4. Fill the Shell script location textbox with the location where you want the launchers to reside. You have to do this manually it will not fill automatically at this time!

On Mac the location could be /usr/local/bin. For the novices, you can use any path inside the PATH variable or add a new path to the PATH variable in your bash profile. Use echo $PATH to see which paths are there.

Note! It did not work right away for me, I had to fiddle around a little before the scripts were generated. You can go to the gearbox of the IDEA (PyCharm for example) and see/change the launcher name. So for PyCharm, the default name is pycharm but you can change this to whatever you prefer.

Original answer

If you do not use the toolbox you can still use my original answer.

~~For some reason, the Create Command Line Launcher is not available anymore in 2019.1.~~ Because it is now part of JetBrains Toolbox

This is how you can create the script yourself:

If you already used the charm command before use type -a charm to find the script. Change the pycharm version in the file paths. Note that the numbering in the first variable RUN_PATH is different. You will have to look this up in the dir yourself.

RUN_PATH = u'/Users/boatfolder/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/Toolbox/apps/PyCharm-P/ch-0/191.6183.50/PyCharm.app'
CONFIG_PATH = u'/Users/boatfolder/Library/Preferences/PyCharm2019.1'
SYSTEM_PATH = u'/Users/boatfolder/Library/Caches/PyCharm2019.1'

If you did not use the charm command before, you will have to create it.

Create the charm file somewhere like this: /usr/local/bin/charm

Then add this code (change version number to your version as explained above):

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import socket
import struct
import sys
import os
import time

# see com.intellij.idea.SocketLock for the server side of this interface

RUN_PATH = u'/Users/boatfolder/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/Toolbox/apps/PyCharm-P/ch-0/191.6183.50/PyCharm.app'
CONFIG_PATH = u'/Users/boatfolder/Library/Preferences/PyCharm2019.1'
SYSTEM_PATH = u'/Users/boatfolder/Library/Caches/PyCharm2019.1'


def print_usage(cmd):
    print(('Usage:\n' +
           '  {0} -h | -? | --help\n' +
           '  {0} [project_dir]\n' +
           '  {0} [-l|--line line] [project_dir|--temp-project] file[:line]\n' +
           '  {0} diff <left> <right>\n' +
           '  {0} merge <local> <remote> [base] <merged>').format(cmd))


def process_args(argv):
    args = []

    skip_next = False
    for i, arg in enumerate(argv[1:]):
        if arg == '-h' or arg == '-?' or arg == '--help':
            print_usage(argv[0])
            exit(0)
        elif i == 0 and (arg == 'diff' or arg == 'merge' or arg == '--temp-project'):
            args.append(arg)
        elif arg == '-l' or arg == '--line':
            args.append(arg)
            skip_next = True
        elif skip_next:
            args.append(arg)
            skip_next = False
        else:
            path = arg
            if ':' in arg:
                file_path, line_number = arg.rsplit(':', 1)
                if line_number.isdigit():
                    args.append('-l')
                    args.append(line_number)
                    path = file_path
            args.append(os.path.abspath(path))

    return args


def try_activate_instance(args):
    port_path = os.path.join(CONFIG_PATH, 'port')
    token_path = os.path.join(SYSTEM_PATH, 'token')
    if not (os.path.exists(port_path) and os.path.exists(token_path)):
        return False

    try:
        with open(port_path) as pf:
            port = int(pf.read())
        with open(token_path) as tf:
            token = tf.read()
    except (ValueError):
        return False

    s = socket.socket()
    s.settimeout(0.3)
    try:
        s.connect(('127.0.0.1', port))
    except (socket.error, IOError):
        return False

    found = False
    while True:
        try:
            path_len = struct.unpack('>h', s.recv(2))[0]
            path = s.recv(path_len).decode('utf-8')
            if os.path.abspath(path) == os.path.abspath(CONFIG_PATH):
                found = True
                break
        except (socket.error, IOError):
            return False

    if found:
        cmd = 'activate ' + token + '\0' + os.getcwd() + '\0' + '\0'.join(args)
        if sys.version_info.major >= 3: cmd = cmd.encode('utf-8')
        encoded = struct.pack('>h', len(cmd)) + cmd
        s.send(encoded)
        time.sleep(0.5)  # don't close the socket immediately
        return True

    return False


def start_new_instance(args):
    if sys.platform == 'darwin':
        if len(args) > 0:
            args.insert(0, '--args')
        os.execvp('/usr/bin/open', ['-a', RUN_PATH] + args)
    else:
        bin_file = os.path.split(RUN_PATH)[1]
        os.execv(RUN_PATH, [bin_file] + args)


ide_args = process_args(sys.argv)
if not try_activate_instance(ide_args):
    start_new_instance(ide_args)

Answer 5

This worked for me on my 2017 imac macOS Mojave (Version 10.14.3).

1. Open your ~/.bash_profile: nano ~/.bash_profile

2. Append the alias: alias pycharm="open /Applications/PyCharm\ CE.app"

3. Update terminal: source ~/.bash_profile

4. Assert that it works: pycharm

Answer 6

To open PyCharm from the terminal in Ubuntu 16.04, cd into

{installation home}/bin

which in my case was

/home/nikhil/pycharm-community-2018.1.1/bin/

and then type:

./pycharm.sh