How do I use sops as an External Tool in my IDE?

Question

I'd like to use sops to edit files in my IDE (Intellij), but I'm not sure how best to set it up as an External Tool.

I found these related questions:

• Use vscode as editor for sops
• How to execute External Tool in IntelliJ

Answer 1

IntelliJ IDEA at least 2020.2 does now support --wait

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/working-with-the-ide-features-from-command-line.html#arguments

I tried

export EDITOR="idea --wait"
sops secret.yaml

Unfortunately doesn't work even though in idea there is the message

Activated from command line: Command line will be waiting until the file '/Users/user/Development/../secret.yaml' has been closed.

Answer 2

IntelliJ IDEA has no support for --wait and cannot be used via the EDITOR environment.

See this issue and the linked duplicates.

External tool will not work. This can be supported by implementing IntelliJ IDEA plug-in that will integrate with the command line tool to transparently encrypt/decrypt the files you are editing.

Answer 3

As of 2020.3.2 i can confirm that setting environment EDITOR to

"C:\\Program Files\\JetBrains\\GoLand 2020.3.2\\bin\\goland.exe" --wait

and then using sops <file.enc.yaml> works fine for me (in windows). You need to press Ctrl-S each time you want changes to be saved since opened file treated as external for the project you working with.