From Eclipse to NetBeans: Part 3

I got a lot of good tips from NetBeans developers and users about how to resolve some of the issues I ran into. A number of them, as I mostly expected, were related to my running a beta that's still under development. Others are resolved via modules and add-ins (that in many cases should perhaps be included as standard). And still other cases are resolved or scheduled to be resolved in NetBeans 6. So to be fair, I decided to continue my NetBeans adventure by diving to the bleeding edge of NetBeans: building directly from source and running JDK 1.6 Beta 2.

I won't go into the details, but getting NetBeans to build was an extremely simple matter (thanks to Tor Norbye from Sun). Set CVSROOT, checkout -P standard, cd nbbuild, ant. It's really that simple. I did need to up the maximum memory needed for ant, but that was a minor issue. After the build, I found "ant tryme" that starts up NetBeans, and I was off and running.

This article will be a short wrap-up of issues from Part 1, revisited based on tips, tricks, and NetBeans 6 current and planned features. Hopefully it will demonstrate to potential switchers that NetBeans has really turned a corner. I'll revisit Part 2 in the next article.

I used to be among the NetBeans detractors...and for good reason; NetBeans had a rocky start. But I'm rapidly growing fond of it, especially using NetBeans 6.

Salvation

I'll take the items from Part 1 point-by-point. There's some useful links inline as well, so feel free to skim this list for issues of particular interest to you.

1. Antialiasing - RESOLVED! When running under JDK 1.6, all text elements are immediately antialiased according to the host platform's settings. No additional configuration changes are needed.
2. SVN by default - RESOLVED, I think. My basic pull of NetBeans 6 from CVS included SVN support immediately. I believe it's intended to be in the full release by default as well.
3. Workspaces - OPEN. My main use for workspaces is to keep different sets of projects in different places, and to a lesser extent to have different configurations for those sets. No obvious support for this in NetBeans 6 yet.
4. Separate repository view - OPEN. Eclipse's repository view is a godsend when you're hunting around for projects, tags, and branches, or if you want to do any remote repository management. I still miss it, and there's no out-of-the-box support in NB 6 for a repository view.
5. Standard SVN layout support - OPEN. I would like NetBeans to understand what "trunk", "tags", and "branches" dirs in SVN are used for.
6. Delete project not deleting files - OPEN. I tried to delete a working copy locally and the files remained on disk.
7. Wizarditis - OPEN. The best example of this is perhaps the SCM wizard, where at least seven clicks are required for me to check out my JRuby branch. If I had a repository view, it might take three or four.
8. Show non-project files in project view - OPEN, but not a big deal. I've gotten accustomed to just using the Files view when I need access to non-Java source. I still think it's necessary to show other files in the project view, but it hasn't gotten in my way as much as I thought it might.
9. Settings dialog search - OPEN, but improving. I remember once being told that if people need to use a site map or search for your site, you're doing something wrong. NetBeans should actually be applauded for presenting common settings in a novice dialog and a full complement of expert settings a button-press away. In NB6, they appear to be moving some of the important advanced settings to the main dialog as well. It's a balancing act, but I think a lot of people will appreciate the easy dialog.
10. Browser selection - Doubly RESOLVED. With JDK 1.6, NB6 uses your platform's browser by default, and the setting has been moved to the basic settings dialog.
11. NetBeans is a goofy name - UNRESOLVABLE. There's too much branding and history behind the NetBeans name to change it, or so I'm told. Oh well, at least it's not limiting in any way, and it does have a nice mouthfeel to it unlike "Visual Studio 2005".
12. Eclipse keybindings - OPEN, but workable. The default Eclipse keybindings are missing some important ones, but you can go map them yourself easily enough. Unfortunately there's no equivalent to Ctrl-Shift-R, which is like a "super open" for any file in the workspace. I also haven't found an outline view shortcut like Ctrl-O, which hurts a bit.
13. Sorted members view - OPEN. However I can deal with the default sorting for now.
14. Show packages as a hierarchy - OPEN, but I've been using the Files view almost exclusively which already uses a hierarchy.
15. Anti-aliased UI - RESOLVED! Under JDK 1.6, UI elements are also antialiased! It looks great!
16. Collapsing comments - RESOLVED, but one bug. It turns out that only the large license block at the top of our JRuby source files refuses to collapse. Everything else, including JavaDocs and multi-line comments, collapses ok. Probably a bug in how NB determines what comments to collapse.
17. Improved coloration - RESOLVED SOON. Better coloration and other editor improvements are planned for NB6.
18. Memory usage - OPEN, but improved. NetBeans 6 is a little better, but still typically takes over 200MB and sometimes over 300MB of memory. Eclipse usually stays under 200MB for me. However I don't have any modules disabled, and NB6 comes with UI design, Java EE, DB support, XML support, Web design support and a ton of other stuff out-of-the-box. That balances things out a lot.
19. FIXME support - RESOLVED via external module. The NetBeans Tasklist looks quite a bit more sophisticated than Eclipse's support.
20. Clear search results - OPEN, but workable. Search for nothing and the results clear. However I conversed with Roman Strobl, NetBeans Evangelist, and he agreed that was a little cumbersome.
21. Right-click editor menu with SCM operations - RESOLVED. You can't get those options right-clicking in the editor, but you can right-click the editor tab for the same effect. Hooray!
22. Odd behavior of SVN menus in file view - RESOLVED. This and several other SVN issues I ran into appear to have been fixed in recent 5.5 and 6.0 development builds. Subversion support seems to be tighter in NB6, or so it seems.
23. Slow start-up - OPEN, but fading fast. It's not a large perceptible difference between Eclipse and NetBeans now, and NetBeans is loading a lot more stuff. It's very nearly RESOLVED.

Hopefully it's apparent that NetBeans is arriving fast. If I were to make predictions, I'd say that NetBeans 5.5 will be a really powerful and useful release, especially considering suport for Java SE 5 and Java EE 5 out-of-the-box. I believe the bugs I've encountered will be wrapped up, and 5.5 will be a compelling alternative to "Eclipse-plus-ten-thousand-plugins", which functionality it easily matches.

I would also predict that NB6 may finally be the big release that surpasses Eclipse for day-one usability and functionality. There's just so much packed into the base product, I don't think Eclipse itself is even a fair comparison. WSAD may be the only real competitor at that point, and I'd prefer not to run that monster (and I also prefer not to use WebSphere.)

One area I think NetBeans needs to improve is in making development releases easily available. I have to dig down through multiple pages, dropdowns and license-acceptance forms to get at the 5.5 and 6.0 dev releases, which have so far been very stable and very nice. To save some time, here's a link to the NetBeans Download form. "Daily" builds are obvious enough, but I believe "Q-Build" builds are probably "QA" builds, perhaps equivalent to Eclipse's "integration builds" or "milestones". Q-Builds might be a good place to get started for you Pro users out there.