mango*

http://blogs.sun.com/mango/entry/welcome_to_the_next_generation

The NetBeans Community Docs has started publishing weekly newsletters which highlights the major happenings over the week in the program. 

The latest newsletter Newsletter #3 is out and can be accessed here at http://nb-community-docs.blogspot.com/2008/09/nbcd-weekly-newsletter-01-sep-2008.html

Previous editions are available at http://nb-community-docs.blogspot.com/search/label/Weekly

Get it in your INBOX

It is recommended to subscribe to it using this feed and get it right in your inbox.

SVN annotations (I have not looked it up for CVS and Hg) shows you per-line revision history with 

• revision number
• the committer
• the date of commit, and
  
• commit message

To view the SVN annotations for a file, Right Click (on the file)> Subversion > Annotations and you will see the file annotated with all SVN information like this:

NetBeans maintains an internal version history of projects and files. Similar to conventional version control systems, the IDE maintains an internal history of the changes to your file.

Whenever you save a file, a 'commit' is registered and subsequently you can examine the various revisions of the code and you may also revert back to an earlier version.

For a file, the 'Local History' is accessible by Right-Click > Local History > Show Local History



The local history is displayed in a new window:



Based upon your preference, the IDE will maintain the local history upto last N days.

You can change the setting as follows:

• Got to Tools > Options
• Choose the Miscellaneous tab
• Choose 'Local History' in the left column
• Enter the number of days for which you want the history to be maintained

'/var/filehistory' under the NetBeans user directory (.netbeans) is the directory in which the local history of the files is maintained

However, how exactly this is done is not clear to me. I would appreciate any insights into this.

It is often a need to view the class hierarchy in OOP languages such as C++, Java. It is very easy to see all the super classes and sub classes of a class using NetBeans.

C++

• Right-click on the Class name and go to Navigate -> View Type Hierarchy
  
• By default, the sub classes of the Class will be shown as in:

• You can also navigate to the super types (Classes) using the pop-up menu on Right-click: 

Java

Here are the same steps (shown visually) in Java:

Supertype Hierarchy:

I just committed some preliminary help sets to the nbPython project.

• Download a zip bundle from here, or
  
• Check out the sources and build it yourself (you will NetBeans 6.5 Beta or later) (Instructions)
  

Note that this source-code is post M6 release

Here are some shots:

A call graph of a function can give information such as:

• the callers of the function
• functions being called from the function

There are two types of call graphs: static and dynamic : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_graph

It is very easy to see static call graphs in your C/C++ and Java projects using NetBeans. (I am using NetBeans 6.5 Beta Pack on Solaris 10 and Ubuntu 8.04)

For C/C++ Projects:

• Right-Click on the function you want to obtain the information and select 'Show Call Graph'

  
  

• Immediately, a window will open in the bottom of the screen where you can see the various information:

  

• You can also see which statement calls the function:

For Java projects:

Java projects has a slightly different terminology: 

• Right-Click on the method you want to obtain the information and select 'Call Hierarchy'
• You can see the callee information in the window towards the bottom of your screen

Bookmarks

Bookmark line(s) of code so that you can get back to them easily:

• Go to the line you want to bookmark
  
• Ctrl+Shift+m- to bookmark (or toggle bookmark)
• Ctrl + Shift + (, / SPACE)  to move forward / backward

Sadly, I wanted to have something like a 'Bookmark Window' which will show me all the bookmarks from where I should be able to navigate to the relevant sections in the source code. Idea for NetBeans plugin?

However, this plugin at http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp?pluginid=11811  allows you to use numbered bookmarks and pops up a menu allowing navigation to any of the bookmarks.

• It is applicable to bookmarks only on a single source file
• Works fine with C++ sources
  
• I would have preferred to see a project-wide bookmarks panel, though.
  

Favortites

You can mark your favorite  source files using:

• Tools-> Add to Favorites
• You can then access the favorites in the 'Favorites' panel
  

It all started a year back with this comment on my blog: http://amitksaha.blogspot.com/2007/07/generating-uml-from-netbeans.html?showComment=1185897540000#c4918388454977303540

Then I went on to make my first contribution to the NetBeans Comunity Docs: http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NetbeansUML

And then a couple of them more, when the Code For Freedom was announced.

Looking for more opportunities & responsibilities, I started helping James in the project as the NetBeans Community Docs Contribution co-ordinator

After around a year in that position, (and contributing docs: http://wiki.netbeans.org/AmitKumarSaha  and getting contributions) I moved on to Sun Microsystems, India for employment and am now involved in the project as the content manager. 

During this 12-months of association of the project, I have seen the project evolve in different ways. From being just a wiki, we have now got a blog, a listing on NetBeans.org and numerous of our contributions are linked from the official NetBeans documentation. We have now started to have weekly meetings to discuss the agenda of the programme.

All showing signs of growth- which is a beautful thing to happen and observe when you have been with the project since its early days.

Today, we took an important step for the program- Weekly Newsletter:http://nb-community-docs.blogspot.com/2008/08/nbcd-weekly-newsletter-18-aug-2008.html

Great to see Varun take the program to new heights!

Angad Singh + myself gave a talk on NetBeans at the Sun Microsystems Campus Ambassador Induction programme at Bangalore.

Here are the slides (link):

Assume you have a NetBeans project checked out from a SVN repository. Now, if you want to perform some version control operations on it from the command line without using NetBeans, then:

• Traverse to the project directory
• Assume your project directory is 'nbpython', then
  
• Perform the SVN operation. For eg.

• amit@ubuntu804-book:~/NetBeansProjects/nbPython$ svn --username amitkumarsaha update
  Authentication realm:  CollabNet Subversion Repository
  Password for 'amitkumarsaha': 
  U    python.console/nbproject/project.xml
  U    python.console/nbproject/genfiles.properties
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/PythonConsoleTopComponentWstcref.xml
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/PythonConsoleTopComponentSettings.xml
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/PythonConsoleTopComponent.java
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/net-java-dev-nbpython-console-actions-PyConsole.shadow
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/PythonConsoleTopComponent.form
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/TermTab.java
  D    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/actions/PyConsole.java
  U    python.console/src/net/java/dev/nbpython/console/PythonConsoleAction.java
  D    pyTestBase/nbproject/suite.properties
  U    pyTestBase/nbproject/project.xml
  .
  .
  .
  .Updated to revision 289.
  
  

  You will NOT need to give the username is not an anonymous checkout or your SVN username is the same as your current login username

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta is out! 

• Learn more about the new release at http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/65/

• As always, downloads for Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows are available from http://dlc.sun.com.edgesuite.net/netbeans/6.5/beta/

An untested beta version of NetBeans 6.5 is available for download here at

http://bits.netbeans.org/download/6.5/beta_hard_to_guess_dir/

This is NOT the official beta. Interesting directory name, that and with a purpose as well

August 12, 2008: The link is no more available. Hence, this post is rendered somewhat null, but I will keep it on for some reason