---
layout: editable
title: Plugin Dependencies
---

In your plugin, you may depend on classes from other plugins, either bundled, third-party or your own.
In order to do so, you need to perform the following two steps:

*  Add the jars of the plugin you're depending on to the classpath of your IntelliJ IDEA SDK.
(**Note**: Don't add the plugin jars as a library: this will fail at runtime because IntelliJ IDEA will load two separate copies of the dependency plugin classes.)

*  Add a <depends> tag to your plugin.xml, adding the ID of the plugin you're depending on as the contents of the tag.
For example:

```xml
<depends>org.jetbrains.idea.maven</depends>
```

To find out the ID of the plugin you're depending on, locate the META-INF/plugin.xml file inside its jar and check the contents of the <id> tag.