I found a pretty good web page that explained how to create an icon on the launch bar to launch IntelliJ IDEA.
http://nufailm.blogspot.ca/2012/05/custom-launcher-for-intellij-idea-in.html
However when I launch it I notice that it just hangs.
I think it's because it's trying to write to stdout or the console and can't, being as it was expecting to launch from a shell.
If I make a launcher out of the .sh file then I get a terminal window and the IDE ...
The terminal window seems sort of redundant. How can I get rid of it?