Roumen's Weblog

NetBeans IDE 6.1 contains a completely new JavaScript editor which provides many advanced editing capabilities such as intelligent code completion, mark occurences, rename refactoring, on-fly analysis of JavaScript libraries, support for many Ajax frameworks and more. Watch this screencast to discover the new and exciting JavaScript-related features. Length of the demo: ~6 minutes.

Click on the image to play the screencast

Hurray! You can get NetBeans 6.1 from netbeans.org. Also notice that there is a new PHP NetBeans IDE available (only as early access).

The final release of NetBeans 6.1 will provide about 50 stable and well tested plug-ins on the stable and beta update centers (depending on which version of NetBeans you install, it can be more or less). However I noticed that some important plug-ins are missing. For example if you want to get the Groovy / Grails plug-ins, you won't find them in default installation. So if you want to have access to more plug-ins in your 6.1 release (or in other releases, betas, etc.), you can add a development update center to your IDE. Note that these plug-ins do not go through the same QA process as the plug-ins on the stable and beta update centers, so use this at your own risk. However the Groovy / Grails plug-ins are probably worth a little risk :)

To install the development update center to your NetBeans installation go to Tools | Plug-ins | Settings | Add update center and specify this URL:

http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/javadoc-nbms/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/nbbuild/nbms/updates.xml.gz

That's it, from now on you get access to 140+ plug-ins. You can disable the daily update center easily using the checkbox if you make sure you install only tested plug-ins. In case you want to get even more plug-ins, you can also install the plug-in portal update center:

http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp?pluginid=1616

Installation experience of NetBeans on OpenSolaris over network is similar to the experience on Ubuntu. The nice thing is that OpenSolaris repository contains the full version of the IDE, not just the stripped-down Java version. I tried installing NetBeans:

roman@opensolaris:~# pkg install netbeans

pkg: no package matching 'netbeans' could be found in current catalog
     suggest relaxing pattern, refreshing and/or examining catalogs
pkg: install failed: Unable to assemble image plan

The problem is that the repository has just been updated (NetBeans has been added very recently) so I need to refresh the repository first:

roman@opensolaris:~# pkg refresh

Then I could run:

pkgroman@opensolaris:~# pkg install netbeans
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                  17/17   5420/5420 339.92/339.92

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                              6393/6393 

To verify the installation you can run:

roman@opensolaris:~# pkg list netbeans
NAME (AUTHORITY)                              VERSION         STATE      UFIX
netbeans                                      6.0.1-0.86      installed  ----

To find out where NetBeans got installed I ran:

roman@opensolaris:~# pkg search netbeans
INDEX      ACTION    VALUE                     PACKAGE
basename   dir       usr/netbeans/ide8/docs/org/netbeans pkg:/SUNWlibnb-ide8@6.0.1-0.86
basename   dir       usr/netbeans/enterprise4/ant/sources/org/netbeans pkg:/SUNWlibnb-enterprise4@6.0.1-0.86
basename   file      usr/netbeans/bin/netbeans pkg:/SUNWnetbeans-ide@6.0.1-0.86
basename   dir       usr/netbeans/java1/sources/org/netbeans pkg:/SUNWlibnb-java1@6.0.1-0.86

So now I could run NetBeans by calling:

roman@opensolaris:~# /usr/netbeans/bin/netbeans

My next wish is that we would fix the UI of NetBeans on Solaris. The toolbars look really broken and default editor font should really be monospace :(

There is a small delay with releasing 6.1 - expect it coming very soon (today or on Monday). As usual, quality is more important than meeting the exact release date ;)

I am currently using the RC version of OpenSolaris (the new Ubuntu-like distribution of Solaris) on my laptop at work. It still needs some work to match usability of Ubuntu but the progress the Solaris guys have made is staggering. A year ago I couldn't install Solaris at all on my machine and today it runs quite well, although it was quite a challenge to get the network driver to run properly. The performance is pretty good, much better than e.g. Windows Vista and in some cases better than Linux. 

If you want to find out about the new release a very balanced review has been written at Phoronix:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=solaris_200805&num=1

The RC2 image can be downloaded here. Final release is coming very soon!

NetBeans 6.1 has much better performance than 6.0 or 6.0.1. A lot of work has been done to make this happen. If you meet anyone from the performance team please buy them a glass of beer (or a jug :). Here are some results of the tests:

* First startup (cold startup) is about 20% faster over 6.0 with no projects opened
* First startup (cold startup) is about 40% faster over 6.0 with several projects opened
* Post-startup work has been reduced by ~50%

The startup speed is still slower than Eclipse's but we are getting close.

What's probably even more interesting is the memory consumption improvements (with 6.0 being worse than Eclipse and 6.1 being better than Eclipse in the basic scenarios):

Other performance improvements include: 

I/O improvements
- File systems optimizations – e.g. 40% faster refresh
- Less disk touches, e.g. expanding a package on network is about 40% faster
• Visual Web
- Hunt on memory leaks
- Opening pages, adding a table component ~50% faster
• Java editor
- Incremental method parsing
- Faster queries processing for navigator
• JSP editor
- Fixed parser and caching, less disk touches

Do you share the same experience that performance of 6.1 has improved over 6.0?

I have upgraded my Ubuntu installation to 8.04 (release candidate). Previously Ubuntu has been using GCJ as the default Java, which had many problems. On 8.04 when I tried:

java -version

I got:

java version "1.6.0"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0-b09)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 1.6.0-b09, mixed mode)

Very cool. Now what about NetBeans? I tried:

netbeans

And the response was:

The program 'netbeans' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install netbeans

So I tried:

sudo apt-get install netbeans

In previous versions of Ubuntu I would have to go install NetBeans manually but this time a little miracle happened:

[sudo] password for roman:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  ant ant-optional javahelp2 junit junit4 libappframework-java libapr1
  libaprutil1 libbeansbinding-java libcommons-beanutils-java
  libcommons-collections3-java libcommons-digester-java
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  libjsch-java libjtidy-java liblucene2-java libnb-apisupport1-java
  libnb-ide8-java libnb-java1-java libnb-javaparser-java
  libnb-platform7-devel-java libnb-platform7-java libnb-svnclientadapter-java
  libpq5 libregexp-java libservlet2.3-java libsvn1 libswing-layout-java
  libswingworker-java libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java openjdk-6-jdk subversion
Suggested packages:
  ant-doc libbsf-java liboro-java liblog4j1.2-java jython antlr libbcel-java
  libjdepend-java libgnumail-java libcommons-net-java javacc javahelp2-doc
  junit-doc libappframework-java-doc libswingworker-java-doc
  libcommons-beanutils-java-doc libcommons-collections3-java-doc
  liblogkit-java libavalon-framework-java libjtidy-java-doc
  libswing-layout-java-doc libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java-doc openjdk-6-demo
  openjdk-6-source db4.6-util patch subversion-tools
Recommended packages:
  ant-gcj ant-optional-gcj libdb4.5-java-gcj jetty
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ant ant-optional javahelp2 junit junit4 libappframework-java libapr1
  libaprutil1 libbeansbinding-java libcommons-beanutils-java
  libcommons-collections3-java libcommons-digester-java
  libcommons-logging-java libdb4.5-java libfreemarker-java libini4j-java
  libjsch-java libjtidy-java liblucene2-java libnb-apisupport1-java
  libnb-ide8-java libnb-java1-java libnb-javaparser-java
  libnb-platform7-devel-java libnb-platform7-java libnb-svnclientadapter-java
  libpq5 libregexp-java libservlet2.3-java libsvn1 libswing-layout-java
  libswingworker-java libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java netbeans openjdk-6-jdk
  subversion
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Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place

And then running:

netbeans

opened version 6.0.1 of my favorite IDE (the Java-only version of it) :)

Note that NetBeans is in the Universe which needs to be checked in the package manager. I didn't have to do this because I already got downloaded some packages from the Universe before. Also, the packages are split into pieces - there is one package for the platform, one for the beans binding, etc.

Opening the package manager and searching for NetBeans yields to:

Getting Java and NetBeans used to be complicated on Ubuntu in the past but now both packages are really well integrated and easily accessible.

I've been getting lots of questions about the grant projects winner selection from various folks from NetBeans community. I've also heard some complaints about why does it take so long. The reason why it took so long to choose the projects was that we got much more submissions than we expected (it was close to 200). I've seen many discussions about the projects choices on the dream team alias (the Dream Team was in charge of choosing the winning projects - so non-Sun people make these choices).

So finally the winning projects have been announced at:

http://www.netbeans.org/grant

Congratulations to the winners!

• CashForward (Bill Snyder)
• Cube°n (Anuradha Gunasekara)
• JavaSpaces (Magdalena Dukielska)
• IvyBeans (Laurent Forêt)
• NB Project (Alessandro Dourado)
• NB-XUL (Aditya Kumar Sharma)
• NetBeans Spot/Sun SPOT Plugin
• NbPython (Allan Davis)
• Scala Support (Caoyuan Deng)
• Visual JavaFX (Adam Kędziora)

• CoffeeDregs (Kees Huizing)
• JSpree (ManiKanta G)
• Netbeans Update Service (Mark Ashworth)
• MONOH (Carlos Oliveira)
• Numbered Bookmarks (M.A.S. Jayasundara)
• PDFViewer (Steve Tzou)
• PL/SQL Editor (Alexandre Soumbatov)
• Project Darkstar Tools and Mobility Support (Karel Herink)
• Regular Expressions Module (Angad Singh)
• Resource Bundle Editor (Denis Stepanov)

Is NetBeans 6.1 ready for release? Vote here.

NetBeans 6.1 is coming soon - it is now available as first release candidate. So go get it. I've been using it for demos during our road trip in Poland (we have driven about 1000 km by car - I am in Wroclaw now :) and it works quite well. The only problem I noticed is that the Options window doesn't show the preview for fonts & colors changes... according to my coleague from QE this bug is known. Hmm I wonder if this will work in the final version? :)

This is just too good to be true - Roman Stanek uncovered in his blog the NetBeans Early Avant-Guard Poetry Site. Read more in Roman's blog. The original poetry page is mirrored over here.

Earlier today I was talking on the phone with my buddy Gregg Sporar. Unlike usual I was using Windows Vista (due to a podcast - I still can't get audio mixing to work well on Ubuntu - I need to record my Skype session using Audacity - if you know how to set this up please let me know, thanks). Gregg was telling me a really funny story and I was laughing out so hard that I slammed several times with both my hands on the table. Suddenly a Sony VAIO popup dialog came up:

It reminds me of the dialog I get when I get angry that my code won't work and press the Shift key five times or more and Windows thinks I have a hard time using the keyboard and I need some assistance... only this one is so much fancier :) 

I have been asked more than 100 times how to get a Java / Sun t-shirt, bag, shirt, USB or other things. So I am delighted to let you know that Sun has launched an online shop where you can buy various Sun / Java goodies including flashlights, backpacks... the choice is quite broad!

Visit: http://sunwear.sun.com/

I shouldn't be blogging about this, because we were saving the big announcement for this year's Java One, but the information has already leaked: I've seen several NetBeans developers blogging about it - so there's no point in hiding it anymore. The next major release of NetBeans which is planned for 2009 will be a complete rewrite - NetBeans is going to be provided as an online service and it's source code will be rewritten in a new programming language. But before I tell you which language it is, read the reasoning first.

Java is a great language but unfortunately it is not flexible enough for the new online web 2.0 world with widgets, mashups, RSS and semantic web - it can't handle the dynamic nature of new web 2.0 applications. Developers no longer want to download and install desktop applications - they are ALWAYS online and all their popular applications are integrated into the ONLY application they need - the web browser. Thus it makes perfect sense to provide an IDE in the web browser. To accomplish this task, there's only one language which works really well inside of the web browser - and can be used both on the server and on the client. Yes, NetBeans 7.0 will be rewritten in JavaScript! (Although we still plan to run the JavaScript engine on top of the JVM using the built-in Rhino engine).

NetBeans has always been about innovation. We believe that by using JavaScript, NetBeans can be more dynamic than ever. Parts of the IDE will run on the server and parts in the web browser - and Sun will provide NetBeans as an online service. For the price that you are used to: FREE. Of course Sun will still provide top-notch commercial support of the online product and we'll be rolling out different service plans shortly after the 7.0 release. We are still discussing whether to continue providing the sources of NetBeans (look how well have all the Google applications been accepted in the open source community without actually providing any source code). We're looking for feedback from the community - does the community actually care about source code of NetBeans or is the FREE price tag that everyone cares about?

We are also investigating the possibilities of running ads in the online version of NetBeans. By that we could make significant money on NetBeans - we could do even more NetBeans days globally with much better finger food. What the heck, we could even transport beer directly from Czech republic so that developers could taste some real beer during NetBeans days!

I've never been more excited about the future of NetBeans - we all know that the future is online in the web browser and NetBeans is extremely well positioned to take the online IDE market by storm!