The Former Weblog of Peter Ahé

Check out Tor's screenshots of Jackpot. Right now the deadline for Mustang is very close so I don't dare to upgrade to a development version of NetBeans.

Tom Ball's cool Jackpot project is available for early access. Tom has provided the javac team with a lot of valuable feedback on the Tree API and JSR 269. Jackpot builds on top of javac through these API components and allows you to write your own refactorings. It also makes it very easy for the NetBeans team to provide a whole suite of new refactorings and other cool stuff.

I can't wait for NetBeans 6.0 to go beta...

Earlier today, I talked to Graham about NetBeans and we agreed that 5.0 will be a really exciting release. However, Graham still missed a "quick-fix" feature. The good news is that it is already there.

Here's how: place your cursor on an error. Then a light bulb icon will appear. Hit Alt-Enter and a little menu of options pops up. So far I have seen the following features, but there are probably more:

• Add import
• Add method or field
• Insert cast
• Add try-catch or throws clause

Oh, by the way, if you're a Sun engineer you're probably wondering about TeamWare. The TeamWare module is now included in Update Center. Simply select Tools|Update Center and click next. The module has improved support for refactorings, so it is now able to check files out during a refactoring. This saved me a lot of time when I renamed virtually all of the Tree API.

There's a cool new feature in NetBeans 5.0 beta. The code completer is now CamelCase-aware. This means if you type UOE, NetBeans will suggest UnknownObjectException or UnsupportedOperationException. Download NetBeans 5.0 beta now.

UPDATE:Roman Strobl's What's New in NetBeans 5.0 Beta.

I just found one feature I really missed in NetBeans. I don't know when this was added, but I found it in 4.1 RC2: IDE Configuration / Look and Feel / Package View / Package View Type = Tree View.

Compare the tree view to the default package view:

This is only selected packages of the JDK. The package view is really horrible when I open the entire JDK in NetBeans.

Have you tried running NetBeans using the latest Mustang builds from java.net? You might have noticed that it really doesn't work. That's because NetBeans has chosen to use the JDK version for the -source option to javac. This is probably a good idea for shipped releases, but for the Mustang snapshots, it isn't really what you want. Using -source 6 (which is otherwise a noop) enables -target 6 by default. However, that target is currently being developed. Until recently, the JVM didn't even accept the class file version, now it does, however the compiler is not following the spec yet.

So don't start using -source 6 yet in NetBeans. Right click on your project, open properties, and add -source 5 in the Build/Compiling section.

UPDATE: As of NetBeans 4.1 RC2 (not beta) you can now set a source level. I just installed NetBeans using a Mustang runtime and I think the default was to use source level 1.5. To set the source level, open the project properties as described above and use the pull down menu:

Anyways, javac and JVM should soon be agreeing on -target 6. So in a few weeks you can start trying out the new stack map format which should improve security as we can enable the verifier by default.