Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

I recently -- a mere two weeks ago -- discovered that the IDE lets you perform actions on multiple projects selected in the Projects window. Just use the Shift and Ctrl key together with your mouse and you too will see what I saw: Not bad, huh. The IDE even adds up the number of projects that I've selected, as if it's boasting: "You want me to close 7 projects? You think I can't handle that? Ha. Wait and see." And, if you liked this tip, maybe you'll also like these...

A picture speaks a 1000 words. So, here are 2000 words: Want to learn how to extend the Runtime window so that all your system's properties are displayed (as shown above)? Want to learn how to be able to edit their values? Want to learn how to set things up so that you can add system properties? Want to find out how to put everything together into a shareable plug-in? Read the brand new NetBeans System Properties Plug-in Tutorial. Feedback is more than welcome -- although,...

Not necessarily a question that keeps me up at night, but something that I've wondered about once or twice is: "Where did the name 'Struts' originate?" It seems that others have wondered about the same thing. Craig McClanahan, the original author of Struts, provides the answer (here): It originally came from a strong memory from when I had a house built -- there were struts all over the place holding things up. Thus, the idea of a framework that 'holds everything up' but...

So, in a head to head contest between a NetBeans plug-in module and an Ant script, who would win? In the left corner we have... the result of a very simple Ant script, while in the right... there's a NetBeans plug-in module embedded in the IDE's Runtime window: In terms of simplicity, there's nothing as simple as the Ant script. As I reported in a very recent blog entry, this is all that's needed to produce a long list of system properties via an Ant script: <target name =...

In Adding Nodes to the NetBeans IDE's Runtime Window, I reported that I'd updated an old NetBeans plug-in sample that I'd found. Today, I re-implemented the sample using the new apisupport (currently available in post-4.1 development builds only). And it all works perfectly. Setting up the project was much easier than before and I'm really looking forward to further developments in this area of NetBeans. Here's what the Projects window and (a new instance of the IDE's)...

Stepan Herold, a NetBeans developer, recently put together a document that describes how to create a NetBeans IDE server plug-in module. I've been working through his document and am planning to turn it into a tutorial soon. Currently, the document describes a generic server, so no server-specific code is included. For example, no deployment descriptors are created and no server is started. It's basically a skeleton of a server plug-in module. Here's what my Projects window...

In Save Demi Moore in NetBeans IDE 4.1!, you saved the Demi Moore macro by using an Ant script that you integrated into NetBeans IDE 4.1: <target name="save-demi-moore" description="Save Demi Moore"> <copy todir="c:\\DemiMoore\\config"> <fileset dir="C:\\Documents and Settings\\${user.name}\\.netbeans\\${release.number}\\config"/> </copy> </target> But notice how clumsy the fileset is! You need to define the ${user.name} and ${release.number} in a proj...

This is a pretty cool target: <target name = "echoprops" description = "echoprops"> <echoproperties destfile="my.properties"/></target> It creates an Ant properties file containing all the current system properties. Then I can look through the system properties and see if I can use any of them in other Ant targets. You have a lot more system properties than you think! Run the above target and see for yourself.

If you download a NetBeans IDE Dev build, you can already begin playing around with the new NetBeans Plug-in Module support. It's obviously still in development (which is why it's a dev build), so many things aren't working yet. On the other hand, a cool thing to do is to download it every few days and see how quickly things change. A very early draft of a quick start document for the new NetBeans plug-in module support is also available here: Quick Start Guide for NetBeans...