Is there a way to run only an “external tool” in a JetBrains “run configuration”

Question

Alle (or nearly all) \"run configurations\" in JetBrains IDEs provide an option to run an \"external tool\" as part of their execution. Is there a way to only run a

Answer 1

This has been a pain point for me for years. Here's my solution:

Run Configurations can be configured to invoke External Tools before launch, so the trick is to setup a run configuration that does absolutely nothing and then add your external tools to it.

Example: In WebStorm, I use an npm run configuration with the command set to version. Invoking this will cause all of the External Tool configurations in the Before Launch section to be executed (in order) before finally running npm version, which just generates output to the npm console.