Since my last post, Defaulting To JDK 1.6 In NetBeans 6.5 On OSX, has enjoyed some popularity I decided to keep running with the NetBeans 6.5/OS X theme. NetBeans is a great, free IDE that supports more types of projects than the average developer would likely ever need. One of the most useful project types that NetBeans supports is Maven projects. If you are new to Maven, here is an intro to peak your interest.

For developers who have been using Maven for a while, you likely will be creating your projects (.pom files specifically) from a text editor but this can be a little overwhelming for those new to Maven or those who would rather simply spend their time writing code instead. NetBeans 6.5 makes it incredibly easy to create a Maven project in a matter of seconds.

First, go to the “File” menu and choose “New Project”.

Under “Categories”, choose “Maven” and in”Projects”, choose “Maven Project” and click “Next”.

The “Archetype” window should open next, select “Maven Quickstart Archetype” and click “Next”.

The “Name and Location” window will open allowing you to give specifics to your project. You can customize this as you see fit but for the purposes of this example I will leave the default settings. Click “Finish” and your project will start to build.

If you are running OS X 10.5.6, as I am, you will likely see the following error:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR]BUILD ERROR
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Error resolving version for 'org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin': Plugin requires Maven version 2.0.7
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, run Maven with the -e switch


The reason for this is that OS X 10.5 shipped with Maven 2.0.6 pre-installed but Apple has never pushed any updates to it. According to the Apache archives, Maven 2.0.6 was released in April 2007 but it is kind of annoying that they didn’t realize that Maven projects would not work by default on OS X before they released NetBeans 6.5. Luckily, it is very easy to update Maven to the latest version if you don’t mind using the terminal and the sudo command.

1. Download the zip with binaries for whichever Maven version you would like to install. At time of writing, the most recent version is 2.1.0, http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/maven/binaries/apache-maven-2.1.0-bin.zip.
2. Once the file is downloaded, you can extract the archive and you should end up with a directory named something like “apache-maven-2.1.0″. Open a Terminal window and cd /usr/share
3. Let’s move the current Maven directory to a backup folder in case we ever want to revert. In the terminal you opened in the last step, type sudo mv maven maven-2.0.6. This will ask you for your password and then move the “maven” directory to a new directory called “maven-2.0.6″, assuming your user account has sufficient permissions.
4. Now let’s put the new version in place so that NetBeans will start using it. To do so, we need to copy the directory we extracted from the zip file. Once again, in the Terminal window you have open, type sudo cp -R /Users/dgabrielson/Desktop/apache-maven-2.1.0 maven. Keep in mind that the path to the extracted “apache-maven-2.1.0″ directory will have to be changed to the appropriate path on your system.
5. Maven should now be upgraded! To confirm, in your Terminal window, type mvn -version and you should see some output like Apache Maven 2.1.0 (r755702; 2009-03-18 13:10:27-0600).

Now if you try to build again, you should get a successful build log ending with:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Enjoy your new Maven build and get coding!

By: Damien Gabrielson

Luego del exitoso lanzamiento por parte de NetBeans.org de la versión 6.5 y 6.5.1 (versión mejorada del 6.5) de su IDE, vino el anuncio lanzamiento de la versión 6.7 del mismo. Esta versión aún no alcanza su etapa final, sin embargo, esta llena de cambios y mejoras. Hoy hablaré de una de ellas, disponible a partir de Netbeans 6.7 Milestone 2; defininda por el mismo NetBeans Team como “Ergonomic”, ya que permite al IDE acomodarse a las necesidades del desarrollador, cargando solamente los módulos que el/ella necesite.

Cuando por ejemplo instalamos la versión “All” o completa del IDE y vamos a revisar los plugins y y módulos disponibles (Tools->Plugins->Installed), veremos (y sin motivo para alarmarnos…) que muchos de los módulos del IDE están desactivados, y prácticamente estan activos los que pertenecen a la parte base del IDE, como lo muestra la imagen:

Lista de plugins para NetBeans 6.7M3

Los módulos no activos, se activarán según lo requiera el usuario. Por ejemplo, si vamos al wizard para crear una nueva aplicación web, cuando intentamos crear dicho proyecto, en la segunda ventana del asistente, aparecerá un mensaje como este:

Activándose...

Esta característica de acivar módulos por demanda, un poco extraña, inicialmente, busca evidentemente aliviar un poco la carga de trabajo del IDE, pues solo trabaja con las clases que necesita, evitando utilizar carcaterísticas que quizás nunca utilicemos (C++, por ejemplo…).

Cabe aclarar que una vez estos módulos se activan no se vuelven a desactivar, a menos que el usuario así lo indique. Una vez más gracias a todos por leer mis posts, hace un año y unos pocos días que me mudé a wordpress y van casi 20K visitas, simplemente gracias!!!

Nota: para aquellos que se estén preguntando por qué saltaron de 6.5 a 6.7, la razón es tan sencilla como curiosa; no querían que se asociara al IDE con el número 6.6…6, jejej, veanlo aquí

We try to stay current with our technologies at Point2. An example of this is using the most recent Java platform, Java 6 (JDK 1.6) and modern IDEs such as NetBeans 6.5. However, staying up to date with technology is not always as simple as it could be. Java 6 was released in December 2006 and NetBeans 6.5 was released almost 2 years later in November 2008 and yet it still wants to use Java 5 (JDK 1.5) as the default Java Platform, regardless of what you have set in the OSX Java preferences. Here is how you can set NetBeans 6.5 to use JDK 1.6 by default.

• Ensure that JDK 1.6 and NetBeans 6.5 are installed
• Locate the NetBeans config file, typically located at “/Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.5.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf” and open the file in your favourite editor
• Set the “netbeans_jdkhome” parameter to the JDK 1.6 home directory (ie. netbeans_jdkhome=
  /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Home)
• In NetBeans, right click on the project in the project window and select “Properties”
• Ensure the “Source/Binary Format” is set to “1.6″
  
• Click on “Tools” on the toolbar and select “Java Platforms”
• Under “J2SE” the default platform should now be “JDK 1.6″
  

By: Damien Gabrielson

While preparing my talk on NetBeans 6.5 and practicing demo, I came across many useful and exciting features. Even though I have been using NetBeans for more than 1 ½ years, I was not aware of all these advanced features. Till now the main purpose of using NetBeans was its Swing GUI builder. Since my school days I have been fascinated by cool GUIs. I wondered how can someone build such nice looking interfaces, since I used to program in BASIC language.

I think I learned more from this demo than my audience. It is always the same case whenever a teacher actually teaches. He has to be prepared for any question during his talk. Same was the case with me, which resulted in a deep understanding of NetBeans and its usage.

I would like to write on some of the cool features of NetBeans. Profiler is an Integrated Performance Profiling tool which helps us to analyze the performance of our code. To be frank, till now I have never given it much importance. But this is one of the main reason why we use one software over another. So if you really want your software to be used, better pay attention to the performance factor.

Next on the list is the Mobile Development. Now it is as easy as dragging a few frames, buttons and some code. Thats it! You are ready to deploy your first mobile application. Similarly, it has a Visual Web Development tool which makes creating web application a fun thing to do.

It has a very advanced editor with almost all modern editing features like live parsing, refactoring, smart code completion, insert code and many more.

Regarding the latest version of NetBeans, there have been considerable improvements in performance especially the startup is 40% faster. Support for PHP, Javascript, MySQL, Groovy and Grails have been added.

NetBeans have been awarded the title “Product of the Year” by developer.com. If you want to know more about the features of NetBeans, Netbeans.org is the best place to look.

A demo on new and cool features of recently released NetBeans 6.5 was held on Jan 20. It was of 2 hrs duration from 3 to 5 pm at CB -16 in our Computer Department.
As expected 71 students attended this demo. Most of them were members of Sun Club(OSUG, Pantnagar).
It all started with a simple question, “What is NetBeans? The most popular answer was that it is an IDE used for Java programming. Well, they were correct but only 33% because apart from being a powerful IDE, it is also a platform for developing applications and a community too.

For next few minutes, I spoke about the interesting history of NetBeans. Students were excited to learn how a final year project turned into such an amazing software. It followed with the overview of its features and the ability to run on any OS with JRE. Students were shocked when they saw the slide showing various technologies supported by NetBeans. A student who have heard of the most of these technologies received a goody.

Then came the real demo, I created a database CRUD application showing how easy it is to create database applications using NetBeans. With this project I also showed how easy it is to develop GUIs with Swing GUI builder(formerly know as Matisse). It was accompanied by demo on advanced editing features.

All the students received a DVD containing NetBeans 6.1, JDK, and other resources. At the end I asked some random questions from the talk and distributed goodies(Pens and Key Chains). Last but not the least, I encouraged them to join NetBeans.org community and explore it.
The demo was successful.

If you are spoilt with double-click Installers and hardly ever opened a DOS-Box, you might be challenged getting some applications up and running in Linux, Unix or OpenSolaris. The Package Manager offers you quite a huge selection of applications and tools that you just select and install, but some stuff requires some manual steps, like Netbeans.

Prerequisites
- Downloaded Netbeans (netbeans-6.5-ml-solaris-x86.sh, link here)
- Installed JDK (link here)

Create JAVA_HOME and PATH
- export JAVA_HOME=/{your jdkpath}
- export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$JAVA_HOME/jre/bin
- Add too add to /etc/profile

Installing Netbeans
- Open terminal session as normal user
- Navigate to the folder with the netbeans-6.5-ml-solaris-x86.sh file
- Make it executable chmod +x netbeans-6.5-ml-solaris-x86.sh
- xhost +
- Change to root user su –
- export DISPLAY=:0.0
- Execute Installer ./netbeans-6.5-ml-solaris-x86.sh
- Rest self-explaining by the standard interactive GUI installer.

I also recommend to visit the plugins to get the latest updates.

Good Luck

Instalaremos ahora JDK 6 update 11 y Netbeans 6.5 de forma conjunta en Linux Debian.

Descarga:

Lo primero que tenemos que hacer es visitar la página de Sun Microsystem siguiente

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

en esta página seleccionamos JDK 6 Update 11 with NetBeans 6.5, y aparece esta otra página

Seleccionamos la plataforma (Linux), Multilenguaje y aceptamos las condiciones de la licencia. Después de indicar continuar, aparece finalmente:

En esta pantalla hacemos click en el enlace jdk-6u11-nb-6_5-linux-ml.sh , y a partir de ese momento comenzará a descargarse dicho archivo.

Instalacion:

Una vez descargado, pasamos a la consola de comandos con atributos de administrador y ejecutamos desde la carpeta de descarga donde se encuentra el archivo descargado

chmod +x jdk-6u11-nb-6_5-linux-ml.sh

y finalmente

./jdk-6u11-nb-6_5-linux-ml.sh

con esto comienza la instalación

Hacemos Next,

Aceptamos los términos de la licencia y volvemos a hacer Next, y comenzará la instslación del jdk necesario para poder ejecutar Netbeans

En la pantalla anterior, aparece el directorio por defecto donde se instalará el JDK, es decir, /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_11, hacemos Next para continuar,

Ahora aparece el directorio por defecto donde se instalará Netbeans, hacemos Next para continuar

En la pantalla anterior hacemos next para continuar,

En la pantalla anterior nos indica que la instalación ha concluido y nos solicita la participación en la estadística, pruebas y mejoras del producto. También nos solicita el registro.

Una vez terminada la instalación, es opcional crear un lanzador en el escritorio, para poder crearlo es necesario identificar el ejecutable y el icono que representa a dicho producto.

El ejecutable se encuentra en /usr/local/netbeans-6.5/bin/ y se llama netbeans.

El icono se encuentra en la carpeta /usr/local/netbeans-6.5/nb6.5 y se llama netbeans.png

Si ahora ejecutamos desde el escritorio aparecerá

Si el equipo donde hemos instalado está conectado a internet, Netbeans intentará averiguar si existe alguna actualización tanto del producto base como de los distintos “plugin” que incorpora, si es así mostrará una pantalla similar a la siguiente:

En esta pantalla hacemos click sobre el botón Update, nos indicará cuál o cuáles son las actualizaciones pendientes en la siguiente pantalla

Pulsamos ahora Next

Aceptamos los términos de la licencia de cada una de las actualizaciones y pulsamos “update”

En esta pantalla, a través del botón radial nos solicita la restauración inmediata o mas tarde del entorno integrado. Lo natural será “Restart IDE Now”. Pulsamos Finish para terminar.

Netbeans se cerrará y se abrirá de nuevo, con la incorporación de las actualizaciones y plugins instalados.

Una vez terminada esta tarea sería conveniente, indicarle al IDE Netbeans que revise todos las actualizaciones cada vez que se abra el entorno. Para ello, seleccionamos la opción Tools/Plugins y aparecerá la siguiente pantalla, en la que hemos seleccionado la pestaña Setting

Vemos que el parámetro “check interval” se encuentra en “Every Week”, lo ideal sería cambiarlo a “Every Startup”, es decir

Hacemos ahora “close” y si es necesario, reiniciamos el IDE Netbeans. De esta forma garantizamos que cada vez que iniciemos el entorno se actualice el producto y sus correspondientes plugin, si los hubiere.

Ya se encuentra disponible un parche para Netbeans en el que se resuelven 62 bugs. A continuación les indicaré como descargar estas actualizaciones:

Nos dirigimos al Update Center: Tools–>Plugins. En la ficha que selecciona por defecto, “Available plugins”, le damos al boton “Reload catalog”. Esto permite que en la primera ficha, “Updates”, aparezca una nueva actualización, la cual se encarga de actualizar el Update Center, y entre otras cosas mejorará la búsqueda de nuevas actualizaciones y nos permitirá, luego ver y descargar el resto de actualizaciones. La seleccionamos y la instalamos, luego tendrás que reiniciar el IDE. Una vez vuelvas a entrar, te diriges de nuevo al Update Center, si la ficha de Updates te aparece vacia le das “Reload”, luego deben aparecer 17 nuevas actualizaciones, seleccionalas todas y sigue las instrucciones. Luego tendrás que reiniciar una vez más, para disfrutar de este parche.

Casi todos los módulos son intervenidos en esta actualización (Php, SaaS, Platform, Java, GlassFish V3, Ruby on Rails, Database, etc.) Es por esto, que realizar esta actualización es altamente recomendable. Si deseas saber la lista exacta de los bugs resueltos, visita este link.

Cualquier editor, por muy básico que sea, tiene opciones para deshacer y devolvernos hasta determinado punto. Netbeans no es la excepción, pues nos permite deshacer y rehacer lo que queramos. posiblemente por haber cometido un error, o haber omitido algún detalle en el diseño. Pero, que pasa si nos damos cuenta de que vamos por el camino equivocado un par de días después?? ya no podrás echar mano del “Control + Z”. Netbeans guarda distintas versiones de tu proyecto local y te permite volver exactamente a alguna de esas versiones. Como haces esto? muy sencillo: desde la ventana de proyectos haces click derecho en el archivo deseado, y seleccionas la opción Local History.

Luego, se abre una nueva ventana, en la cual en 2 ventanas separadas verticalmente, se muestra una comparación del archivo actual, ubicado a la derecha, con las distintas evrsiones anteriormente gurdadas, las cuales se seleccionan en la parte superior. Las línes verdes indican texto añadido, las azules lo que ha sido modificado y lo rojo lo que se eliminó en la última versión.

Pero, bueno que tantos días conserva Netbeans? Eso lo puedes averiguar en las opciones del IDE

Como podemos ver este es un “Subversion monousuario”, el cual seguramente nos sacará de más de un aprieto, cuando el Ctrl+Z se quede corto :p.

Revisando el sitio de Sun he podido ver cómo se hace el lanzamiento de la plataforma JavaFX, para la cual han creado un sitio, en el cual pueden ver vídeos, descargar el SDK, ver ejemplos y demos de lo que se puede hacer con ésta plataforma para la construcción de interfaces de aplicaciones.

Adicionalmente la gente de NetBeans anunció (y me enteré vía correo) que se puede actualizar la versión 6.5 para soportar JavaFX, aún no sé si con un editor visual o a puras sentencias.

Esperemos y veamos como se adopta ésta nueva tecnología.

Desde hace un par de días, se encuentra disponible la úñtima versión de Netbeans; Netbeans 6.5, el cual cuenta con muchísimas ayudas y herramientas. Recordemos que Netbeans dejó de ser hace muhco un simple editor de java, pues es compatible con muchas otras tecnologías como C++,PHP,Ruby, Ruby on rails, JRuby, J2ME, Spring,Hibernate,… en fin!

Además, ofrece soporte para algunos servidores de aplicaciones como WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat y por supuesto GlassFish al cual incluye en el paquete “All”. Igualemente es compatible con bases de datos como MySQL, postgreSQL,Oracle y DB2.

Y aun hay más, pues corre en (casi) cualquier plataforma: MAC OS, Windows, Linux y obviamente Solaris.

Te invito a descargarlo aqui. Recomiendo la opción “All”. El paquete UML no está incluido, sin embargo, se puede descargar a través del “Update Center” de Netbeans.

Si quieres saber más, no dudes en visitar la página de Netbeans 6.5!!!

I developed using VIM and konsole using Python and Django. Some time ago Carlos Ble suggest me to use and IDE. The I try Eclipse + PyDev for a time, but never felt comfortable with it. Since Netbeans team decide to include Python in the supported languages Netbeans could work with; I decide to give it a chance.

While Django is not fully supported itself, I feel Netbeans much more fluent than a Eclipse. Netbeans is not perfect but, on my view, fits my needs more than Eclipse do. I’ll try to use this platform for a while before claim to be THE IDE.

Using Django with it is possible using the same trick I used with Eclipse. Set manage.py as the main file and runserver --noreload as argument. I didn’t success trying to do step-by-step debugging (I didn’t spent more than two minutes trying).

To be the “perfect” platform for Django developing Netbeans needs:

• Be able to create a django project
• Be able to create django apps into a project
• Be able to run manage.py shell
• Be able to manage DB (At les manage.py dbshell
• Manage Django tests (manage.py test)
• Find method usage in templates
• WYSWYG template editor

The last one is not a real need but it would be great.

Even lacking all this features, I think is probably the best IDE for Django I have ever tried.

Before I even could install and test the release candidate they released the official version yesterday.
Check out Netbeans, my favorite IDE here (link).
I guess
a) the download servers are glowing now.
b) some books need to be updated.

Normally I write posts to solve problems. Sadly today I’m writing a post out of desperation. I am currently reviewing the RC of Netbeans 6.5, it has some great features *BUT* we have our main huge project we are working on right now that we can’t work with in it.

It’s an enterprise application with Jasper Reports and Java Server Faces, however. We cannot load any JSF pages they don’t appear for editing, just the java code, we occasionally get an “Illegal State Exception”.

I read somewhere that the problem is to do with Jasper Reports, but even not loading the plugins we cannot load the JSF pages from the project in 6.5.

Do you work often with sql queries? Are you tired of running another gui tool like MySQL Query Browser or SQL Server 2005 Management Studio (really a pain, if all you want is just executing some sql queries). Even worse, if you are working on an application which should be tested on multiple databases. So are you searching for some simple lightweight query executing tool or scratching your head to even come out with your own tool? Come on, if you are using NetBeans you have a great way out.

(You might probably be living under a rock if you haven’t ever heard about NetBeans. NetBeans is currently one of the world’s most popular IDE for Java, Ruby, Groovy, PHP and so on. If you haven’t ever tried NetBeans come on, try it today. You will be surprised)

For ages, NetBeans comes with a database explorer that can be used to connect to virtually any database in this universe that has a jdbc driver. You can use the NetBeans database explorer to execute sql queries, visualize your tables, identify your primary/foreign keys etc, etc..

But with NetBeans 6.5, the database explorer module has been sharpened and some good new features were added. I would like to highlight some of them (please forgive me if you find me highlighting some old featuers as well)

Well, the single most important feature provided by the database explorer in NetBeans 6.5 is the support for “tabbed views” of your result set. Trust me, it is better than some of the gui tools provided by the database vendors themselves. Ok, enough talking, let me show you this cool features with some screenshots.

What is the we see here..? You execute multiple sql queries and NetBeans shall display the result in new tabs. You can even set the number of rows you want to see and then navigate through the “paginated” table.

What more, you can refresh your result set and even insert new data without writing any sql!

The IDE even provides a cool “SQL History”, which can be very useful to execute some of the previously written queries.

Some other features include, user interfaces for creating new tables, columns etc..

The following screenshot shows the property of a column.

A simple gui but very useful tool to create tables.

The gui to add column.

Suggestions to the NetBeans team:

Though the database explorer in NetBeans 6.5 is very good, I feel some more features, if added, can turn NetBeans into a really powerful database tool. Some of them are..

- Provision to just execute “selected queries”. Say I open one “SQL Command” and write three different queries. I must be able to just “select” the query I want and then execute it. Currently I need to comment out the unwanted queries or I should open a new “SQL Command” window. This can be a very useful feature.

- Provision to visualize the “meta data” of all the table columns like “size”, “datatype” etc in one single window. Right now, I need to right click every single column and then select “properties” to achieve the same.

- Provision to visualize the table relationships using the powerful “scenegraph” api.

- Provision to set table relationships.

Conclusion:

Overall, the database explorer in NetBeans 6.5 can be a very useful tool for developers and thanks to the NetBeans team for all their hardwork.