JetBrains Releases RustRover Plugin for Solana Anchor Smart Contract Development

JetBrains released the Solana (Experimental) plugin for its RustRover IDE on August 6, giving Solana SOL$104.10-2.1% Anchor smart contract developers a built-in transaction and account explorer, ending the routine of tabbing out to an external block explorer during development.

The plugin is available on JetBrains Marketplace and was developed by Alex (@alexlst1) from the JetBrains team. The official RustRover account announced the release on August 6 at 13:00 UTC.

Account and Transaction Explorer Replaces the External Browser Tab

Solana smart contracts are written in Rust, which makes RustRover a natural fit for Anchor development. Until now, inspecting what a contract actually did after a deploy or test meant leaving the editor to query an external explorer such as Solana Explorer or SolScan. The plugin closes that gap. Developers can track transactions and inspect the specific accounts involved, including their state and data, from inside an active RustRover session.

Community responses to the announcement singled out the embedded account explorer as the main practical gain: one developer described having account state inspection built into the editor as a significant quality-of-life improvement for anyone who has spent time switching between an IDE and a block explorer to verify transaction results.

Anchor Deploys, Toolchain Setup, and Local Validator Support

The plugin's explorer is the headline feature, but the toolchain integration goes further. Installation runs in a single step: the plugin configures all required Solana tools and dependencies inside RustRover automatically, replacing a manual CLI setup. Anchor deploys and smart contract tests run through standard IDE run configurations, keeping the full workflow inside the editor.

Local development is also covered. The plugin works with local test validators, local wallets, and Surfpool environments. For developers who need to step through compiled BPF/sBPF program execution, the plugin works alongside the community-driven Solana Debugger project, which is building a graphical debugger for on-chain Solana programs.

The plugin carries an "Experimental" label on JetBrains Marketplace. RustRover is JetBrains' standalone Rust IDE, separate from the Rust plugin available for IntelliJ IDEA.