A while back I wrote a tool called BeanNetter that would take any library JAR file and generate a NetBeans module that added the library to the list of libraries you can use from your projects (a handy way to bundle source and Javadoc all together so people can debug). It also would add any JavaBeans in the JAR to the Matisse (Swing GUI Designer) component palette. Well, it is now also an Ant task. So you can make it part of the build process for any library to also generate a NetBeans module.

This afternoon I got an email from Mikael Grev about the tool, and asking if there was an Ant task. I'd planned to do one but hadn't gotten around to it. This afternoon I finally did.

It can still benefit from some prettification, but it's ready to try. You can download it here.

Easy way to use it: The first time, just run the GUI using java -jar beans2nbm.jar and point it at the files for the library you'd like to bundle into a NetBeans module. At the end of the wizard, on the summary page, it will show all the necessary Ant code to replicate what it just did (and include the text you entered in the wizard). Just tweak the paths to be relative to your build script and paste it there.

For examples, the Quick Color Chooser and Wizard projects are now set up with build scripts to use the task. Here is the ColorChooser build script.

Please try it - comments and feedback are most welcome! And many thanks to Mikael for the suggestion!

For convenience, here is a sample target:

    <target name="nbm" description="Generate a NetBeans Module" 
        depends="jar,release-javadoc">

        <taskdef classpath="lib/beans2nbm.jar" 
            classname="beans2nbm.ant.GenNbmTask" 
            name="nbm"/>
          <zip zipfile="dist/colorchooser-src.zip">
              <fileset dir="src">

                  <exclude name="**/CVS"/>
              </fileset>
          </zip>
        
        <nbm destFolder="dist" 
            destFileName="net-java-dev-colorchooser.nbm" 
            description="A color chooser" 
            version="1.1" 
            homepage="http://colorchooser.dev.java.net"

            codeName="net.java.dev.colorchooser" 
            jarFileName="dist/colorchooser.jar" 
            author="Tim Boudreau" 
            displayName="Color Chooser" 
            license="CDDL"
            docsJar="www/release/colorchooser-javadoc.zip"

            sourceJar="dist/colorchooser-src.zip"
            minJDK="1.4"/>
    </target>

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