Should you commit your project's .idea directory?

Code styles, crazy style, funky settings, we all love them, don’t we?

In time when IDEA kept everything in one big and ugly XML file you had to resort to maven, or other solutions (like external code style files) to keep everything organized and as you like it.

But since IDEA changed the format it keeps its settings (it’s now a .idea directory with multiple files inside) it’s tempting to keep settings with your project.

And I can only say go for it!

I really believe in keep it simple, stupid! You should not have a long list of things to set up before you can commit a first line of code to the project. And all those code style, IDEA set up instructions are making it harder.

So now, you can keep those settings with your project, and make all your developers life easier. Any reasons why not to do it?

There are some files that are not needed there and you can easily ignore them. So what’s stopping you? Make it simpler!