Your IntelliJ Run Configs Are Trapped — Here's How to Free Them

I had one of those 2 AM moments a few months back. The kind where you've been debugging something for hours and you finally have the configuration dialed in — the right environment variables, the right JVM args, the right Spring profile, the exact right working directory. Everything works when you hit the green Run button in IntelliJ.

Then someone on your team asks: "How do I run this?"

And you stare at the screen. Because the answer is trapped inside IntelliJ's .idea/runConfigurations/ folder in some XML file that looks like it was designed to be read by nobody.

"The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities." — Edsger Dijkstra

"Portability is one of the most important qualities of a good program." — Brian Kernighan