Thursday 5 January 2012

Netbeans 7.1 is out but watch out before you grab that hot cake!

Good news Netbeans 7.1 is out with lots of support for the latest technologies ie JavaFx 2.0, Java EE 6 and JDK 7 but there are a few gotcha's if you decide to jump on-board now.


NB: I'm one of the noisiest Netbeans preachers wherever I find myself trying to win some eclipse souls. I just love the software but these gotchas are so raw I just want to warn you.

Netbeans 7.1 does not work with Subversion 1.7 period! So if you have just bought a new pc and you are setting up a new development environment or upgraded your subversion, or your company uses subversion 1.7, Netbeans 7.1 is not for you.

I now have to downgrade my subversion to use this but the advantages from Netbeans outweigh the downgrade so will have to. I have tried all the hack and command line client noise they usually throw at you and it just didn't work so don't bother trying

  • The JavaFx 2.0 project format in Netbeans have changed since the 7.1 RC2 so if you created your nice JavaFx 2.0 project with any of the previous Netbeans versions, such as 7.0.1, 7.1 beta or any version before the 7.1 RC2, your JavaFX 2.0 project will not run! The ant targets have changed and there is no migration support, so the only option is to recreate a blank project and copy your files manually.
  • Unfortunately, I don't have the patience for some other IDEs so my only options are to downgrade and to copy my files from my JavaFX 2.0 projects but I know its worth doing.
If you have any substantial development going on, then watch out before you grab that hot cake!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's an option in Netbeans to use an external SVN client instead of the built in plugin. Works like a champ for me!

cameo said...

Can you explain how you got that to work because I tried so many times and it just didn't work. I use the tortoise svn client.

frank said...

in /etc/netbeans.conf
add "-J-DsvnClientAdapterFactor=commandline" to the netbeans_default_options line. Be sure you have the commandline version of svn installed

Jason Sykes said...

Your point about JavaFX isn't exactly news, since it's also in the release notes of NetBeans IDE 7.1: "The FX project file format has been substantially updated from the 7.1 Beta format and may cause problems for users who attempt to open 7.1 Beta FX projects in NetBeans IDE 7.1."

http://netbeans.org/community/releases/71/relnotes.html#known_issues

javin paul said...

What are highlight feature of this NetBeans release. though I prefer Eclipse because of its excellent remote debugging feature.

cameo said...

@Jason Sykes I know its not news, just wanted people to be aware. Of course the scenario I mention don't apply to lots of people so thats fine.

@Frank. thanks for the tip. Does it work with TortoiseSVN or only with the Collabnet SVN?

GoldenKevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
GoldenKevin said...

I believe when you installed TortoiseSVN, there was an option to install the command line client binaries (or something like that). Doing so will give you a file named %programfiles%\TortoiseSVN\bin\svn.exe (or "C:\Program Files (x86)\TortoiseSVN\bin\svn.exe" for 64-bit Vista or 7 or "C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\svn.exe" for any other edition of Windows).

You can point NetBeans to this as the commandline svn. If you hadn't selected this item during installation (it was unselected by default), I believe you just run the TortoiseSVN installer and it'll allow you to add or remove features. Or if it doesn't, I guess you will have to uninstall TortoiseSVN and re-install it.

To make NetBeans use this .exe, go to Tools -> Options -> Miscellaneous -> Versioning -> Subversion, and make sure under Path to the SVN executable file, it says "C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\TortoiseSVN\bin". Then exit out of NetBeans, right click your desktop shortcut to it, Shortcut tab, and next to Target, add " -J-DsvnClientAdapterFactory=commandline" without the quotes after the end quote of the path.

GoldenKevin said...

Oh, TortoiseSVN has a 64-bit version, so you may not have to check "C:\Program Files (x86)" if you have 64-bit Windows and installed 64-bit TortoiseSVN.

cameo said...

Thanks to you all. I think I didn't check any checkboxes when I installed TortoiseSVN and that is why my commandline things never worked..Will try gain.

Thank you

Unknown said...

Working !
Followed GoldenKevin instruction.