Development Simplified - NetBeans 6.5 Released

It's out!

NetBeans IDE 6.5 is the latest release of Sun's award-winning open-source IDE that enables developers to rapidly create web, enterprise, desktop, and mobile applications with Java, C/C++ , JavaScript?, Ruby, Groovy, and PHP. Supported by a vibrant developer community and offering a diverse selection of third-party plugins, the NetBeans IDE is a must-download for developers.

Some highlights for Java developer:

• The award-winning NetBeans IDE for Java keeps getting better. New to 6.5: support for Groovy and Grails, built-in support for Hibernate, Eclipse project import, Compile/Deploy on Save, and much more.
• Value Proposition: We continue to build on our award-winning IDE for Java by adding popular new features and improvements. Find out why NetBeans IDE for Java is the right IDE for you- with rich support for ME/SE/EE development and new feature highlights including Groovy and Grails support, built-in support for Hibernate, Eclipse project import/synchronization, Compile/Deploy on Save, and Ajax-enabled JSF CRUD generator.

In addtion to this there is also an Early Access preview of the IDE for Python.

• Simplify your Python development with the NetBeans IDE for Python- Early Access. This community driven project combines the practical development expertise of Python developers with the experience of IDE development by the NetBeans community.
• Developers can enjoy great editor features such as code completion, semantic highlighting, instant rename, smart indentation, pair matching, and more. The EA release also includes a community developed Python debugger as well as the ability to choose between the Python and Jython runtimes.

NetBeans Demo Camp, Munich - 18th November

Come to Munich and join us for the 1st NetBeans Demo Camp in Germany.
Here is the preliminary program:

• "New Features in NetBeans Platform 6.5"
  Geertjan Wielenga, NetBeans Guru, Sun Microsystems Inc., Prag.
• "Demosession: ChipInspector - NetBeans APIs im Einsatz"
  Tanja Drüke, Genomatix Software GmbH, Munich, Germany.
• "RCP Entwicklung in der Praxis: Third-party libraries und ClassLoader"
  Anton Epple, NetBeans Dream Team Member, Eppleton, Munich, Germany.
• "Portierung von Swing Applikationen auf die NetBeans Platform"
  Aljoscha Rittner, CEO, Sepix GmbH, Hann. Münden, Germany.
• "Grosseinsatz - NetBeans RCP im Grossprojekt"
  Sven Reimers, NetBeans Dream Team Member, ND SatCom Defence GmbH, Immenstaad, Germany.

Do not miss it - this will be a lot of interesting stuff and it will be even better with YOUR questions. So do not hesitate and register here

http://netbeansdemocamp.eventbrite.com/

Oh and do not miss the "pubs" section - sounds promising.

Thanks Toni for organizing this event!

NetBeans 10th Birthday

Starting today there is a one week celebration for NetBeans 10th Birthday.

Chime in and celebrate the NetBeans spirit with the NetBeans Decathlon!

For more details about the Decathlon go here!

From the official statement:

Since 1998, NetBeans has grown from a student project into an award winning Open Source project, IDE and application platform. With millions of downloads a year worldwide, the NetBeans community boasts an active and diverse following of software developers, students, instructors and partner companies.

For our 10th birthday bash we plan to highlight some of the key initiatives and individuals whose contributions and dedication have kept the NetBeans momentum going strong. There will be unique content—video greetings, community profiles and more—available during the week-long retrospective.

We've also come up with a fun way for the community to celebrate with us—the NetBeans Decathlon! Ten interactive activities that let NetBeans users show and share what the NetBeans project means to them.

Participants will be entered to win a cool limited edition NetBeans T-shirt. Stay tuned for details of the Decathlon and the official birthday kickoff!

So you are still not part of the community? Do not wait - you won't get a better start! Join the NetBeans community at netbeans.org!

Meeting Geertjan or from Lookup to Obama

Last Thursday I met Geertjan after he delivered a NetBeans Training Course.

What would you expect from such a meeting? Let me start with the obvious:

• Some good food and a real good beer ;-)
  

What else? Well I'll try to list everything discussed and maybe I will pick up some of those and dive deeper into those topics.

• Modules, Modules, Modules ....
• Lookup
• Deprecating old API's
• API Design
  
• TreeTable vs. new OutlineView
• Visual Library
  
• NetBeans RTC
  
• NetBeans RCP
• NetBeans RCP LifeCycle (esp. the explicit entanglement with DataObject)
  
• Upgrading to NetBeans 6.5 RCP (impacts of changed mode definitions)
• NetBeans Dream Team
• NetBeans RCP Training (differences between University and Company)
• JavaPolis - Javoxx - Devoxx
  
• NbPython
• Groovy
• Closures
• GSF vs. Schliemann
• ...
  

Other topics

• Neal Gafter joining Microsoft (hear JavaPosse podcast)
  
• Barack Obama
• Financial Crisis

Hope I did not forget anything important (I am sure there were more topics) - anything to add Geertjan?.

Hope we can have a follow up meeting - there are a lot more interesting topics to cover.

SQE, Maven and NetBeans 6.5

After a long quiet period here some news from SQE. The actual main goal of SQE is to provide a stable release for NetBeans 6.5 .

The first milestone towards this is support for Maven based projects. This is now available as a binary preview. Just download the zip-File unpack it and install the nbm's. Since not all the version numbers are actually increased, the binary snapshot requires that you uninstall all previously installed parts of SQE. I hope to find a simple method to fix this problem for one of the next binary previews.

Bug fixes:

• Checkstyle now working under Unix
• A lot of small changes for better project recognition
  

New features

• Maven support
  

Updates

• Checkstyle 5.0 beta 01
  

Upcoming (new things or things already planned)

• Update FindBugs to 1.3.5
• Update PMD to 4.2.3
• Refresh on save/compile (especially useful for tasklist)
• further UI enhancements
  • windowgroup for codedefect results
  • move codedefect history (still not working) to control center
• select checkstyle.xml to use

Any other ideas, comments, wishes? Just leave your comment here or send an e-mail to the user list at sqe.dev.java.net.

NetBeans DreamTeam

I have been invited to join the NetBeans DreamTeam. That's some kind of reward for working on SQE. Not just having fun working on such a complex project - but really feeling the appreciation of the community. I hope I can live up to the expections.

So any ideas - how to make NetBeans even better?

SQE - Jazoon 2008 / NetBeans 6.x compatible - Version

Following the tradition to release at least for the big events a new updated version of SQE is available for Jazoon 2008. Unfortunately nobody from SQE team is available at Jazoon or the NetBeans Day in Zurich, but we still work on making SQE better. So here is the summary since last update notification

Bug fixes:

• Problem with configuring (disabling) FindBugs detectors
• Fix NPE in RuleViolationRenderer in case of missing classname
• Enhance pmd annotation message with rule name
• Fixes NPE in SortAction and issues with displaying new results (update problem of resultui)
• Fix issue with display and jump to RuleViolation in case of default package

New features

• Configuration (disabling) of PMD rules (per project/ global)
• Disabling rules/detectors is available via context menu in result view tree for PMD and FindBugs

Updates

• PMD 4.2.2
• FindBugs 1.3.4

Upcoming

• Refresh on save/compile (especially useful for tasklist)
• further UI enhancements
  • windowgroup for codedefect results
  • move codedefect history (still not working) to control center
• configurable checkstyle.xml (at least)
• use native PMD file format for storing configuration
• use native FindBugs format for storing configuration
• quick-fix for disabling detectors (still under evaluation)
• enable filtering for defects (available but not functional)
  
• RefactorIt integration (still far future)

Get the latest version as always via updatecenter or download the module containing the updatecenter description from here.

Since I still have problems with kit versioning vs. module versioning you may have to delete your sqe1 cluster from your installation, since the IDE does not seem to pick up the changes in the modules not shown in the plugin manager. I hope I will find out how to use this correctly for the next update...