Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

My first skirmishes with org.openide.windows.TopComponent have been quite fruitful. At least now, for the first time, I have managed to dock a module into the IDE's Properties mode. Here's the evidence (click to enlarge): I've found this technical document quite helpful. It describes the Windows API -- including topics such as "TopComponent", "Docking", and "Modes". NetBeans developer Petr Blaha has been very helpful too (he provided the basis of the sample and a lot of...

Following the instructions on the Server Plugins Project page, I downloaded the NetBeans IDE 4.1 sources and the serverplugins module. I then built the JBoss, WebLogic, and WebSphere plugins. (Just make sure, as specified on the page, that you don't build the sources using Ant 1.6.1. As I tried to do.) And, after everything had built successfully, I opened the IDE, registered my local installations of JBoss, WebLogic, and WebSphere, went to the Runtime window, started two of...

One things I've missed in standard projects is that you can't create contextual menus and attach Ant targets to them. This is possible for free-form projects. The difference is, I guess, because the philosophy behind these projects is different. When working with a standard project, you don't have your own Ant scripts and so the IDE provides them for you. The assumption is that you have no intention of extending these IDE-given Ant scripts too much, otherwise you'd be using a...

Developing a NetBeans Module (NBM) can be a surprisingly smooth process. For example, the illustration below shows the state of my TagExtension module yesterday. At the top of the Projects window you see the module project (which is actually just a plain old J2SE project). Beneath it is a random web application project that I'm using to test the module. In the illustration, you see a tag called abc.tag with an icon and menu items provided by the TagExtension module (click to...

I've blogged quite a lot about menus -- about creating IDE-level menus in the Options window, about creating contextual menus for free-form projects, and about hooking Ant targets to both of the above. However, I'd never considered the possibility of manipulating menus on file level. This is where it really gets interesting. I found out about it all thanks to a great tutorial by Tim Boudreau: Module Building: Basic Support for a File Type. Initially, I must admit, the whole...

In this final installment of the unofficial "NetBeans Modules for Dummies" guide, we're going to apply the principles of yesterday's installment to the Anagrams sample that is distributed with the NetBeans IDE. We'll start with a standard J2SE application and finish with an NBM. The NBM will give us a new menu called "Games" with a submenu called "Anagrams". Clicking on "Anagrams" will pop up the Anagrams sample. Of course, we could choose to install the NBM either in the...

Now that I can create a NetBeans Module -- albeit a very simple one -- I'd like to be able to transform an existing J2SE application into a NetBeans Module. What would I have to do to make this possible? Here's a short list:Specify the changes that you want to make to the filesystem. Do you want to access the module from a menu item? A toolbar button? Or some other way? Create a layer.xml file for this purpose. Create an Action class that extends CallableSystemAction. What's...

I made some progress with the Ant scripts that I use to create my NBMs. In the first part of this "NetBeans Modules for Dummies" pseudo-series, I mentioned several workarounds for problems that are caused, as it turns out, when the wrong version of nbantext.jar is used. In the openide-dev mailing list, which I only discovered today, Jesse Glick says the following in response to someone else querying the use of nbantext.jar: "The version in the release41 branch assumes the...

Another way to learn about writing NetBeans Modules (NBMs) is to read as much as possible about them. Here is a complete list of all the resources I've come across while attempting to understand NBMs. I've tried to organize the links in stages, otherwise it's all a bit overwhelming. Getting your feet wet NetBeans: How to write a HelloWorld module by Jerry Tan. This was the first accessible document I ever read on NBMs. It's short and sweet, even though I later realized that...