Evan Summers's Blog

Trip and Tick 1: Checking out a java.net project using Netbeans

I got an email on Friday from a chap in Italy asking where he could find a document on how to run aptframework in Netbeans, which is like pressing not one but two or three, of my JButtons simultaneously, and which has led to me to writing this blog article. I'm sure he'll be watching Italy in the World Cup Final this weekend, rather than doing anything else, but anyway here goes.

Let's say you hear about a project that is hosted on java.net, and you go to its home page eg. http://aptframework.dev.java.net. You'll see something like the following.

With any luck there'll be a link to some screenshots, which the project owner might have uploaded into "Documents & files" under the "Project Tools" tab. That's very nice, but you'll quickly discover that projects on java.net are all about the code. Happily, you can browse the source in the CVS using "Version control - CVS".

Some projects put a Webstart "Launch" button on the home page. Supoib! (Catch the episode when Bart Simpson works for the mafia, to see how to pronounce "superb" as "supoib" heh heh.) I really must read up on JNLP and do the same... see Trip and Tick 2!

If you aren't a member of java.net, well that's very easily rectified. Just click on Register at the top right of the above page to get the following.

Now in Netbeans, you go to the CVS menu, and choose "Checkout..." and specify the following CVS root, with your own java.net username and password of course.

Then you specify the project name as the module, and the directory where you want to check out projects to, eg. to your home/projects directory.

The default suggestion is $HOME/nbprojects or something like that. In Windows, that would be C:\Documents and Settings\USER\nbprojects. Personally i like to keep my CVS code, and Netbeans project file directory separate. So i use a projects subdirectory for the code checked out from CVS, using Netbeans or some other CVS client. And later we can specify a separate nbprojects subdirectory for the Netbeans project files, when we create the project after the code has been checked out.

Alternative directory names might be cvsprojects for the code, and netbeans for the Netbeans project files. In UNIX these would be off your home directory, and in Windows in your Documents and Settings.

Incidently, if you also use Eclipse, then your code will be in your Eclipse workspace directory, and your Netbeans project files in nbprojects. And you can happily switch between Eclipse and Netbeans in this case, eg. to use Netbeans' Mattise or Profiler.

Back to the game. It might take Netbeans a minute or two to check out all the sources into the chosen directory. Then Netbeans prompts us to create a project from the checked out sources. This is just like prompting us to select "New Project..." in the File menu.

We give the project name, and our netbeans project folder for this project, eg. off nbprojects.

We specify our "existing sources" as the src directory we have just checked out, as follows. We can ignore any other directories, eg. www is the project home page, and nbprojects is a Netbeans project directory, maybe checked in by mistake long ago, in a land far far away...

Finally, we select the class to run in the project properties. We right-click on the project name in the Projects window, and choose Properties, the last item in the project menu, and the following dialog pops up.

Our source folder has already been selected, so nothing to do here. We click on the Run category, and select the main class to run, as follows. In the case of the aptframework demo, it's ZViewContext.

Finally we press F6 to compile and run! Actually this will compile and run the currently flagged "Main Project" of those projects you have open in the Projects window. You right-click on the project and select the "Set Main Project" to flag that project as such. The Main Project name then goes bold. Otherwise you can right-click and select "Run Project" to run a project which is not flagged as the Main Project.

In the case of aptframework, the demo will popup as follows.

The next article in this series will be "Trip and Tick 2: JooJ up your project page with Netbeans' JNLP tool."

Update: You can check out the demo without checking out the code using the following Web Starter :)

(695k)

Comments

• Very cool. Now... how do I check IN a project to that site (which is something I really need to know)!? :-)

  Posted by: geertjan on July 07, 2006 at 12:19 PM

• Never mind... I worked it out. https://nbitextsupport.dev.java.net/

  Posted by: geertjan on July 07, 2006 at 12:31 PM

• You are really spamming my RSS feed. I'm considering deleting my subscription to the java.net feed. It's like the sixth time this shows in my client. You should really take in account that republishing the article will make it appear as a new post every time. Please take with that.
  regards

  Posted by: jordihs on July 11, 2006 at 03:21 AM

• I meant 'pleas take care with that'. 'Take with that' sounds totally different :-)

  Posted by: jordihs on July 11, 2006 at 03:22 AM

• Sorry about that. It's a problem that maybe the java.net site administrators should attend to - maybe it's just a setting on their RSS they should tweak, ie. not to refeed a old article that is modified. I will email someone at java.net/o'reilly about this now.

  Posted by: evanx on July 11, 2006 at 07:33 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.