How to separate the change-notes to a new file when developing a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA?

Question

During developing an IntelliJ IDEA plugin, when the chang-log becomes bigger and bigger, and it is in the fileplugin.xml. How can it be split into a separate file and put under the resource folder?

Take below as an example:

<change-notes><![CDATA[
  Add change notes here.<br>
  <em>most HTML tags may be used</em>
]]>
</change-notes>

Answer

Put it in another file like plugin_changelog.xml.

1. Edit file plugin.xml, remove the original change-notes declaration and change it to a xi:include directive:

<idea-plugin xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
<xi:include href="plugin_changelog.xml" xpointer="xpointer(/idea-plugin/*)"/>
...

2. Create a new file plugin_changelog.xml in the same folder as plugin.xml, and the content should be like this:

<idea-plugin>
    <change-notes><![CDATA[
  Add change notes here.<br>
  <em>most HTML tags may be used</em>
]]>
    </change-notes>

</idea-plugin>

Now it will work.