Intellij IDEA Cucumber plugin doesn't see step definitions if they come from dependency

Question

I have steps defined in another artifact. I inherit from that class in the test/java folder in current project. Plugin shows warning "Undefined step reference" and are unable to highlight or navigate to definition.

The issue is also discribed here:
IDEA-104610 Support Cucumber step definitions from other JARs / projects
IDEA-157652 Cucumber intellisense lost when placing stepdefinitions in external library

Answer 1

Intellij IDEA (mine is 2018.3.6) actually can resolve and highlight such steps, but only if you have sources jar with step definitions. So solution is to download sources with Maven or another build tool.

I also would like to show how to generate sources jar if you own that dependency with test definitions:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>attach-sources</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>jar</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
   </plugin>
 </plugins>
</build>

And if you also generate separate test jar then:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>test-jar</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
   </plugin>
    <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>attach-sources</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>jar</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
        <execution>
            <id>attach-test-sources</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>test-jar</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
   </plugin>
 </plugins>
</build>