The JavaOne presentations from years gone by are all available on-line in various forms. Yesterday I discovered that one of the best NetBeans Platform presentations ever done at JavaOne is one of these. It is presented by two engineers working at Boeing, about the platform and application they built atop the NetBeans Platform. What the presentation focuses on:

Here is another podcast recorded to explain importance of playing games while learning to design APIs. Ask yourself today: Can you win an API Fest with a change like this?

--JaroslavTulach 09:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Maven support has improved a lot in NetBeans 6.7. One of the small, but important, features is the possibility to add a new dependency to a Maven project. In the previous version of NetBeans we could add a new library, but then we had to know the artifact and group name ourselves. In NetBeans 6.7 we can search for dependencies in the repositories, add an opened project or use the dependency management features of Maven.

To add a new dependency we right-click on the Libraries node of a Maven project and select Add Dependency....

NetBeans opens a dialog window where we can do several things to a dependency to our project. We can fill in the input fields ourselves and choose the scope from the Scope combobox.

But we can also search for a dependency in the repositories. To do this we must type text in the Query input field. The Search Results shows found libraries as we type. We select the library we want and press the OK button to add it to our project.

Instead of using a query we can use the Dependency Management tab. This tab is enabled if our project's POM contains a dependencyManagement section (or the parent POM most likely). The tab shows all available artifacts that are defined in the dependencyManagement. We select the artifact we want to add to our project and press the OK button to add it to our POM.

And finally we can even select the artifact from one of the open Maven projects in NetBeans. If we have more than one Maven project in the Projects window the Open Projects tab of the Add Dependency dialog window is enabled. To add the project's artifact to our POM we select the project and press the OK button.

In Netbeans 6.7 you can invoke, and especially debug unit tests in the following way:

1. From test results:
- Invoke context menu on a given test and select 'Debug'

2. From project
-  Select test file and choose "Debug->Debug Test File" from main menu or press Ctrl_Shift_F6 (on Mac Cmd_Shift_F6)

The way on how test are executed is changed right after 6.5, you may get more insight from http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=119922

Please also check http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=158812, to track the recent changes.

Thanks to Alexei Mokeev for providing this information - I was shortly before filing a P1 bug :-). In my opinion the Netbeans 6.5 way was more intuitive.  

The code completion for Java in NetBeans 6.7 also includes options for code to be generated. In previous versions we had to use Source | Insert Code..., but now we only have to press Ctrl+Space and we get to see which code can be generated by NetBeans.

Suppose we have the followings simple class:

package javaapplication11;

public class MyObject {
    private String netbeansRules;
}

We press Ctrl+Space (in Windows) to activate code completion (or select Source | Complete Code.... NetBeans shows the code completion popup:

At the top we see the code NetBeans can generate for us. We see constructors, methods to override from java.lang.Object and get/set methods for our property:

We select the option we want to let NetBeans generate the code.

Here's some news for Grails users. Let's say this is my domain class:

Now, this is code completion in the BootStrap.groovy for the above domain class in NetBeans IDE 6.5:

And now, in NetBeans IDE 6.7, here's code completion in the same BootStrap.groovy:

Not bad, right? Get started with Grails in NetBeans IDE here:

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/grails-quickstart.html

...or do so here on the Grails site:

http://www.grails.org/NetBeans+Integration

In other news. Now here's an interesting movie about Michael Jackson. Can't find the second part, though.

Andreas Stefik (pictured, right) is an instructor currently teaching at Central Washington University (CWU). He is beginning teaching as an assistant professor next year at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). His primary area of interest and research is in developing custom programming languages and compilers.

There’s a great overview about the new features in NetBEans Platform 6.7 over at DZone:

What’s New in NetBeans Platform 6.7? | NetBeans Zone.

It has all the details. Read it and vote for it!

When I was playing with JavaRebel in April, it was not possible to use JavaRebel with the NetBeans platform. Basically because the module system is just another container and for each container you need a JavaRebel plugin. The guys at Zeroturnaround wrote the plugin a few weeks back (thanks!) so I've downloaded the nightly build and tried to experiment a bit. I've also worked some more on Compile on Save support for 6.8, so I wanted to test how far we've got with #161337. Here's the result.

The Netbeans Community Docs newsletter for June 2009 is now available.

To view the newsletter, please click the link below.

June 2009

View the NBCD Newsletter Index:

NBCD Newsletter Index

Best to you, and thanks for reading.

Josh Juneau

First let me announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.7!

I would like to thank everyone who helped us to make the IDE better. Thanks for every reported issue, comment or contributed fix. To learn more about NetBeans IDE 6.7 please use the following resources:

• Download NetBeans http://www.netbeans.org/downloads
  
• Videos about NetBeans IDE 6.7 http://www.netbeans.org/kb/docs/intro-screencasts.html
• Features of NetBeans IDE 6.7 http://www.netbeans.org/features/
• General information about the NetBeans: http://www.netbeans.org/

Second announcement is that long awaited PHP 5.3.0 is released!

PHP 5.3.0 brings new feautures and bug fixes. See announcement for more details. NetBeans IDE 6.8 will bring support for PHP 5.3.0.  For everyone who is eager to play with new features I can recommend to download one of latest PHP daily builds and try our current support. You may be pleasantly surprised and we are curious about your feedback. Definitely you can expect more blog entries announcing individual features in the couple of next weeks.

I just upgraded my NetBeans to version 6.7, and being quite lazy I didn't want to recreate all previous libraries and references, but obviously I need them. Yes, I might have decided to keep all settings from the previous version(s), which I regularly backup, but my interface had something strange and the dimensions of some widgets were quite quirky and my knowledge of the program does not go that far.

Anyway, after restoring the project I'm working on, NetBeans informed me of some missing references, just as expected.

Happy as a clam, I took the previous build.properties file, restored the lines that referred to my libraries (libs, sources and all) and... NetBeans stabbed me in the back! Still, it couldn't see the libraries!

After some restartings of the program and of the system (hey when you're working with Windows you get used to it... isn't it sad? and it often it works... isn't it sadder?) NetBeans still ignored my cries. It turned its back on me, despite all my affection steadily grown in all these years.

I gave up and recreated the libraries manually, but immediatly thereafter I checked the latest modified files in the .netbeans directory and found out what was missing... what I was missing, so actually NetBeans didn't stab me in the back so we're still in love. Yes, if you're wondering it, I had to apologize, but it happily welcomed me back.

Anyway, romances aside, when you create a library NetBeans not only adds the references in your build.properties file, but it also create an xml file in the config/org-netbeans-api-project-libraries/Libraries directory.

Should you need it... now you know!

As a sidenote: apparently NetBeans doesn't always allow the removal of different plugins at the same time, and it took me several tries to disable the profiler (actually I had to remove it, as I didn't manage to just disable it). More on the new version will probably follow, up to now I just can say that my peer likes the new colors of the splash screen.

While you wait, go get it yourself!

I've uploaded the Netbeans 6.7 final artifacts to the Maven repository at http://bits.netbeans.org/maven2/. It contains the module jars, NBM files, javadoc and source jars and other artifacts relevant to 6.7 release.

Please note that when upgrading your NetBeans platform application from 6.5 to 6.7, you need to increase the version of all artifacts from RELEASE65 to RELEASE67 and also in your nbm-application project, change the dependency from org.netbeans.cluster:platform9 to org.netbeans.cluster:platform10. The artifactId of the platform cluster has changed as the cluster version was increased. (Not sure what meaningful purpose the cluster numbering serves, but that's a different story)

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.netbeans.cluster</groupId>
            <artifactId>platform10</artifactId>
            <version>${netbeans.version}</version>
            <type>pom</type>
        </dependency>

Please note that the current 3.0 version of the nbm-maven-plugin might have problems with NetBeans 6.7 . A new version of the plugin will appear shortly.

If you follow NetBeans development, you know that NetBeans 6.7 has been released this week. By far the friendliest IDE for JavaFX development has been NetBeans. However, in a very surprising twist, the latest NetBeans 6.7 release does not include the JavaFX SDK 1.2. Instead, the download’s information page clearly indicates that you’ll need NetBeans [...]

In NetBeans 6.7 we can get code completion as we type. Normally we must invoke code completion with Ctrl+Space. To get auto popup code completion we go to Tools | Options | Editor | Code Completion. We select Java from the Language combo box. The option dialog window shows the option Auto Popup on Typing Any Java Identifier Part (What is in a name?). We must select the checkbox to get auto popup code completion.

Now when we write code in the Java editor the code completion popup window shows when we stop typing characters.

In the new NetBeans 6.7 we can easily change the font of the output window. We must right-click in the output window and we get a popup menu. We select the option Choose Font... and we get a dialog window where we can choose the font for the output window.

Changing the size of the font is also very easy. If we right-click in the output window we get a popup menu with the options Larger Font and Smaller Font. The default shortcut keys in Windows are Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus. So if we have a lot of text in the output window and we have good eyes we can make the font really small to get it all in one output window.

Right now, as we speak [type], I am working on articles/interviews relating to three applications on the NetBeans Platform... none of which anyone in the broader NetBeans Platform community knows about. So, to give you a sneak preview, here they are, with a little bit of background info on each. (Not too much info, otherwise why would you want to read the completed article/interview?)

First of all, I present... a financial application, which is created in Brazil, by Paulo Canedo, and a team of developers around him, who work for the Tribunal de Contas do Estado do Tocantins, a state in Brazil, where all the financial management related to the state is done on the NetBeans Platform. The application was started in 2007 and, in particular, Paulo's team likes the wizard framework of the NetBeans Platform, as well as the update center. Combined, these features enable the application to be responsible for all finances in the city, i.e., purchases and payments. The application processes data via XML and then transforms and stores in a Derby database. Furthermore, the application is used to analyze the data thus obtained and stored.

And here is a sneak preview screenshot (more in an upcoming article):

Next, an application by Ingmar Hendriks, and others, who are students at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Not very long ago, they completed a NetBeans Platform Certified Training. (My blog entry "Amsterdam on the NetBeans Platform" tells you all about it.) Ingmar's graduation project was to create a sensor monitoring application. He had to make two programs, a server and a client. Because he didn't have a whole laboratory full of sensors at school, he had to simulate the sensors by generating random values within a certain parameter. The generation of these random values had to be done on the server, with a time interval of a few hundred milliseconds and the server needed to store these values. This itself sounds very doable until you realize that over 400 sensors had to be simulated, each with an interval of a few hundred milliseconds and that these had to be stored into memory and not on the hard drive.

In order to achieve this, the memory had to be controlled, which is not possible with Java because you have no control over memory management... so C++ had to be used. The client, however, was a different story. It only needed to access the values of a sensor and show them in a chart. If a value on the server exceeded its preset safety parameter, it needed to show a warning or error in the client. Here's a sneak preview screenshot of the application that resulted from all of this:

And, finally, let's take a look at Central Washington University's programming tools for the blind that, hopefully, will make them more accessible. These tools are very complicated, as they involve custom compilers, debuggers, and sound architectures. These architectures then need to be built into standard IDEs.

Here is a screen capture of the environment as a whole, annotated with details of what was added at Central Washington University. Notice that, while the screen capture looks just like NetBeans IDE, what has been added is a new programming language (Hop). In addition, the debugger is "omniscient", which means that you can execute code forward and backward. For example, in most debuggers, you can click "Continue" (the green button) and step the code to the next breakpoint. In this debugger, you can also "Rewind" (the blue button) to the previous breakpoint. Similarly, most IDEs let you step over a line of code. This one also lets you step back:

What do these applications gain from being based on the NetBeans Platform? Modularity (i.e., you can create plugins for these applications), while being based on Swing (the standard UI toolkit). That's a combination that no other framework provides natively. Typically, a developer using the NetBeans Platform begins by appreciating the NetBeans Platform's Swing extensions, such as the window system and explorer views. Later, the modularity becomes increasingly useful, both from the side of development (i.e., encapsulate code on a level higher than packages, which makes it easier to create work areas for distributed development teams) and from the side of deployment (i.e., the end user is able to extend the application, by means of plugins, without needing to download/understand the entire codebase).

But, of course, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. To find out about several other NetBeans Platform applications, click here and browse through the whole showcase. Several known applications on the NetBeans Platform cannot be advertized, i.e., must remain secret, since they're the basis of, for example, military or financial systems whose underlying technologies cannot be made public. In many ways, that's a pity, because the full length and breadth of NetBeans Platform usage will probably never be known.

Want to advertize your application on the NetBeans Platform? For free? Drop me an e-mail at geertjan DOT wielenga AT sun DOT com and it will be given all the attention you desire (plus more).

FISL 2009 wrapped up over the weekend. Even though the conference officially ended on Saturday but the connections made there will certainly allow us to continue all the great momentum. The conference celebrates open source and it was certainly great to see Federal Government and Banks with their booths in the exhibitor halls. The visit by Brazilian President Lula certainly highlights the importance of this conference to the local community. There were booths from Debian, Firefox, Ubuntu and other major open source softwares. Some commercial vendors had a booth as well and of course Sun Microsystems had a big presence with GlassFish, Open Solaris, NetBeans, MySQL and other offerings.

I delivered 3 talks and participated in 1 talk show:

• Java EE 6 (slides) & Enterprise Features of GlassFish (slides)
• Creating powerful web applications using GlassFish, MySQL and NetBeans/Eclipse slides
• Continuous Integration using Hudson (slides)
• Simon Phipps Talk Show

This blog featured 14 blogs, 10 videos, 275 pictures and 2 GlassFish production stories over the past week. The collage is created from some of the pictures:



Click on the collage to see a larger version. The complete photo album is available at:



A playlist of all the 10 videos is below:



And now all the 14 blog entries ...

• GlassFish Swimming to FISL, Brazil
• Javali 2009 Trip Report
• FISL 2009 Day 1 Report
• Porto Alegre - I shoot you, you shoot me
• Running inside Parque Moinhos de Vento, Porto Alegre
• Porto Alegre - I shoot you, you shoot me
• FISL Day 2 in Pictures & Videos
• supercrud.com in Brazil picked GlassFish over JBoss - Find out why!
• Porto Alegre - I shoot you, you shoot me
• Digital TV-based Banking using GlassFish, NetBeans and MySQL - Ginga community in Brazil
• FISL 2009 Day 3 in Pictures & Videos
• Porto Alegre - I shoot you, you shoot me
• FISL 2009 Day 4 in Pictures
• Porto Alegre - I shoot you, you shoot me

Over all, thoroughly enjoyed the Brazilian spirit and looking forward to next visit!

Many thanks to the Sun Brazil team, especially Bruno Souza, Mauricio Leal, Eduardo Lima, Vitorio Sassi and other Campus Ambassadors!

Technorati: conf brazil fisl javali glassfish netbeans mysql hudson

Hi all,

You've probably heard the big news: NetBeans 6.7 is live. Here is the official press release:

NetBeans.org is proud to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.7!

The focus of NetBeans IDE 6.7 is connectivity—helping developers to connect to the latest technologies and to each other. New features include integration with Project Kenai, a collaborative environment for developers to host their open-source projects; native Maven support, and Hudson integration.

Building on the success of previous releases, NetBeans IDE 6.7 offers enhancements for Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy and C/C++, and more. Additional highlights include a self-diagnostic Profiler, and support for SVG Rich Components, remote debugging in Ruby, and the latest version of GlassFish. The release also provides plug-in support for Zembly, a single registry and repository for popular Web APIs.

Providing superior support for multiple languages and innovative team support through Project Kenai, the NetBeans IDE 6.7 is the ideal tool for developers to stay connected to their teams and to the latest technologies!

NetBeans IDE 6.7 is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. There are several community-contributed localization efforts underway to support additional languages. Join the efforts today.

More information about NetBeans IDE 6.7:

• NetBeans IDE 6.7 Features
• NetBeans IDE 6.7 Tutorials and Documentation
• Videos of NetBeans IDE 6.7 in Action

As always, we welcome and encourage feedback about your experience using the NetBeans IDE. Share your thoughts on our mailing lists and forums. If you blog about NetBeans add your blog to Planet NetBeans. Follow NetBeans on Twitter for updates about NetBeans news and development.

NetBeans IDE Connects Developers!

Cheers!

--James

Netbeans 6.7 (7.0) features -  detailed view (kenai, maven, javaee). Someone translated this article from German. Thanks for the translation!

If you want to try out kenai go to: http://kenai.com/projects/javaee-patterns/,  or open "Kenai" Tab --> Open Project and enter: javaee-patterns.

Since today the final version of NetBeans 6.7 can be downloaded here. And do not forget to look here for a feature overview. If you tried the release candidates of 6.7 you will welcome all the new features! Great work! Where can we donate? The first impressions of this release for me as a NetBeans user are:

Learn how GlassFish and NetBeans helped Ginga community to build a TV Banking application in Brazil. See a live demo of the product, it's really exciting!

Why GlassFish ? - They love how NetBeans tooling completely hides the complexity of what's happening underneath and the ease-of-use with GlassFish.


Thanks Hugo Lavalle for the interview and good luck with your product!

Technorati: conf fisl brazil glassfish story netbeans mysql ginga digitaltv banking

The NetBeans IDE 6.7 has been released at http://www.netbeans.org. News in this release are listed in NetBeans IDE 6.7 Release Information, release notes are available here.

The profiler enhances heap analysis capabilities by supporting the OQL scripting in the HeapWalker (hit F1 in the OQL Console to get a detailed help), computing retained sizes for each instance on the heap and listing first N largest objects by retained size. The Overview tab introduces information about number of objects pending for finalization and thread call stacks at the heap dump if available.

  

The other major profiler improvements include support for exporting profiler results (live results, profiler snapshots, telemetry data) to CSV, HTML and XML and the self-profiling service called "Profile Me Now!" which helps to debug IDE performance problems.

To get a summary information about new profiler features and bugfixes see the NetBeans profiler 6.7 Release Notes.

I'm back from FISL in Brazil! Too many highlights to do justice to—experiencing presentations by Richard Stallman, Simon Phipps, and Peter Sunde was certainly one of them. Another was being in Brazil at all, of course. Anyway, I summarized it for anyone who'd like to know my take on what happened there (or, at least, to find out what kind of things I personally experienced):

• FISL 2009: Day 1... Open source as an attribute instead of an entity
• FISL 2009: Day 2... The Internet will not listen to reason
• FISL 2009: Day 3... Cybercrime law is equivalent to censorship

What I found especially interesting about FISL was the focus on copyright / human rights law, as much as on technology itself. In other words, more often than not, the speaker would not do any demonstrations at all, nor talk about what wonderful things their company is doing. Instead, they'd talk about the current state of cybercrime legislation as it pertains to some area or other (see the above links for details).

My award for most inspiring presenter goes to Peter Sunde (Wikipedia entry). My award for most eccentric presenter goes to Richard Stallman (Wikipedia entry). From both I learned an incredible amount. See part 2 above, for all the details.

I had my own few minutes to tell my tale, in a presentation on Saturday entitled "Java Development: Beyond the IDE". Basically, it was all about how NetBeans IDE 6.7 raises the bar when it comes to what an IDE is able to do. For the first time, with NetBeans IDE 6.7, an IDE is able to manage your project beyond the create/edit/deploy/debug cycle: you can also store it (for free) in a source code repository, assign issues to it, retrieve the source code, and chat to other team members... all inside the same IDE where you did your coding! Uniqueness was never this unique.

Here's my presentation (though the majority was a demo, so you won't see much in the slides):

BeyondTheIDE.odp (OpenOffice)

And here's a pic of me presenting the agenda of the presentation:

The above entails that I demoed Kenai.com, GlassFish, MySQL, and VisualVM, in addition to NetBeans IDE. Of course, I ended by summarizing the main enhancements in 6.7:

By the way:

Download NetBeans IDE (for free!) here.

A lot of cool reactions afterwards. Attendees were amazed at how responsive NetBeans is and how many features it has out of the box. The first pic above was taken by Arun Gupta, the second by Eros Stein. He's a NetBeans user I mentioned in the 3rd part of my articles listed above. It was great to meet him. In terms of creating a community around a product, nothing beats talking to a user face to face!

Thanks for the great time at FISL. Especially to the Sun Campus Ambassadors who were there. They were great.

The NetBeans 6.7 compatible OpenGL Pack has been updated to version 0.5.5 and is now available on the plugin portal also. The current release is feature compatible with 0.5.4 (release notes) only JOGL and project webstart extensions have been updated to JOGL 1.1.1a security update.