README
NetBeans IDE - Release 3.4
Contents
- Introduction
- What's Changed In This Release
- What's New In This Release
- System Requirements
- 3.1 Hardware
- 3.2 Operating System
- 3.3 Software
- Installation
- The Launcher and Startup Parameters
- Compatibility/Upgrading
- Known Problems
- Documentation
- More Information
Welcome to NetBeans IDE release 3.4, a modular, standards-based integrated development environment (IDE),
written in Java.
NetBeans is not just an IDE. NetBeans is:
- An open source IDE written in
the JavaTM programming language.
- A tools platform into which other
tools and functionality can be seamlessly integrated by writing and
incorporating modules.
- An application core which can be
used as a generic framework to build any kind of application.
Read more about NetBeans...
You can find the latest information about this release on the Release 3.4 pages.
Some features that existed in previous NetBeans releases have been
removed from this release:
- Support for the JDK 1.1 Tools debugger, which does not work with v.
1.4 of the JDK, has been removed from the distribution. Support for the JPDA debugger remains.
If you need to use the JDK 1.1 debugger, you can download it from the Update
Center.
- The Javadoc tab has been removed from the Explorer. You can manage
Javadoc sources through the Javadoc Manager, which you can open from the Tools
menu. You can also use the Javadoc Index Search to view documentation for a
class.
If you want to view a particular Javadoc directory in the Explorer, set
its Hidden property to False. The directory will appear in the Filesystems tab
of the Explorer.
To replicate the previous functionality, you can download
the (unsupported) Javadoc UI Helper module from the NetBeans Alpha Update Center. See
Issuezilla bug
22805 for more information.
- The Ant Manual and the Javadoc for Ant have been removed from this
distribution. You can add them to the IDE by downloading the Ant Documentation
module from the NetBeans Update Center.
If you develop modules for NetBeans, check the
NetBeans
Upgrade Guide for information on API changes.
The NetBeans 3.4 release contains many new features and enhancements.
The complete list of new features implemented in this release is available in the IDE's installation folder
in the CHANGES.html file.
Since NetBeans is written in pure Java, it should run on any working implementation
of JavaTM 2 SDK, Standard Edition.
The hardware requirements are similar for all platforms, but it may differ slightly for some cases.
The recommended configuration for running the NetBeans IDE is:
- Disk space: 40 Mbytes
- Memory: 128 (Windows platforms) - 256 Mbytes (most other operating systems)
- Processor: PII/300 (Windows or Linux), UltraSPARC II/450 (Solaris), 500MHz Alpha (Open VMS) or equivalent
Note: If your system's memory is lower than the above recommendation, you should set
a lower maximum heap size in the bin/ide.cfg file. For example, if your system has 64 Mbytes of memory,
you can change the -J-Xmx96m parameter to -J-Xmx48m.
Any operating system supporting Java(TM) 2 SDK, Standard Edition.
Below is a list of platforms that the NetBeans IDE can run on.
If you know about any other platform, please let us know.
- Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, ME
- Solaris 8
- Linux - any distribution
- OS/2
- Open VMS 7.2-1 or later
- Mac OS X 10.1.1
- HP-UX
NetBeans requires a Java 2-compatible JVM. Download the latest version of the appropriate JDK
(v. 1.3.x or 1.4.x) from the following sites:
If you are running on
a Microsoft Windows system, please note that the runide.exe installer does not detect
beta versions of the JDK. You can set the -jdkhome jdk_home_dir parameter
in the ide.cfg file if you want to use a different JDK than the one detected by the
installer. See
The Launcher and Startup Parameters for more information.
For all platforms you can download the .zip or the .tar.gz or the .tar.bz2
archive file and
unpack it on the hard disk using your favorite tool. Then you must customize
the startup parameters to tell the IDE where to find the SDK. Please read the
Launcher and Startup Parameters section for details.
On Microsoft Windows platforms, you can download and run an .exe point-and-click
installer that guides you through the required steps.
Several ".bin" executable
Installshield installers are available for various UNIX platforms.
You may need to make these executable before running :
$ chmod +x NetBeans.bin
$ ./NetBeans.bin
While the installer will search for any installed JDKs, and
prompt you for which NetBeans should use, you can speed the
install up by specifying a JDK on the command line:
$ ./NetBeans.bin -is:javahome <path_to_your_jdk>
On OpenVMS
- Download the OpenVMS NetBeans self-extracting archive to
your OpenVMS system. You may want to put this file into
its own empty subdirectory since documentation and the
actual installable kit will be created there.
- Assure your default directory is set to the directory
where the NetBeans archive was downloaded.
- Execute the command:
$ RUN kit_name
Replace kit_name with the full name of the
self-extracting
archive which you just downloaded. The contents of the
archive will now be extracted to your directory.
- View the installation documentation which was created in
the extraction process and follow the steps contained in
the guide to complete the installation.
On Mac OS X
- Untar, unzip to extract NetBeans. Note: unzip is
part of the developer tools, so it is not available in a normal installation.
Do not forget to use gnutar instead of tar. Using StuffitExpander to extract NetBeans can cause
problems with truncated filenames for NetBeans 3.3. For more info see
Bad expansion of .tar.gz on Mac OS X
- To launch NetBeans open the Terminal application and go to the
netbeans/bin directory.
- Start NetBeans in the standard look and feel using the following command:
./runide.sh -jdkhome /Library/Java/Home
The -jdkhome switch can be omitted if you set the environment variable JAVA_PATH or
JDK_HOME to /Library/Java/Home
- NetBeans can be started in the Aqua look and feel using:
./runide.sh -jdkhome /Library/Java/Home -ui com.apple.mrj.swing.MacLookAndFeel -fontsize 10
Note that settings are incompatible between the Aqua and normal look and feels,
so it is a good idea to have two different user directories if you want
to test both normal and Aqua look and feels. Use the -userdir switch to select different user directories.
The IDE is run by a launcher. Launchers for several platforms are located in the
bin subdirectory of the installation directory.
For UNIX, the Bourne shell script runide.sh is the launcher.
For Microsoft Windows, use the runide.exe or the runidew.exe
executable. runide.exe is a Microsoft Windows console application.
When you run runide.exe, a console opens on the desktop with
stderr and stdout output from the
NetBeans IDE. You can type Ctrl-Break to get a thread dump,
or type Ctrl-C to quit the whole program.
runidew.exe is the executable for running the NetBeans IDE
as a Windows application without a console.
For OS/2 runideos2.cmd is the launcher.
For OpenVMS runideopenvms.com is the launcher.
The launcher loads the JVM, builds the IDE's classpath,
passes it along with some default parameters to the JVM, and lets the
JVM launch the Java application. It also restarts the IDE after you have
used the Update Center.
You can pass startup parameters to the launcher using the
${IDE_HOME}/bin/ide.cfg file. The launcher tries to read this file before it
starts parsing the command line options. You can break the
options into multiple lines.
The following options are available:
-h
-help
- print descriptions of common startup parameters.
-jdkhome jdk_home_dir- use the specified version of the Java(TM) 2 SDK instead of the default SDK. By default on Windows
systems, the loader looks into the Windows registry and uses the latest SDK available.
-classic
- use the classic JVM, instead of the default Java HotSpot Client VM.
-cp:p additional_classpath
-
prepend the specified classpath to the IDE's classpath.
This option is generally not recommended for any purpose.
-cp:a additional_classpath
-cp additional_classpath
-
append the specified classpath to the IDE's classpath.
This option is generally recommended only for adding custom look and feel implementation JARs,
which you may instead add to the NetBeans
lib/ext/ directory.
See the online help for information on mounting user development libraries.
-Jjvm_flag
-
pass the specified flag directly to the JVM.
-ui UI_class_name
- use a given class as the IDE's look and feel.
-fontsize size
- use a given size in points as the basic font size for the IDE user interface.
-locale language[:country[:variant]]
- use the specified locale.
-userdir userdir
- explicitly specify the userdir, which is the location
in which user settings are stored. If this option is not used on UNIX the
location is
${HOME}/.netbeans/3.4. On Microsoft Windows systems,
the default is .netbeans\3.4 beneath your default Windows
profile area (e.g. c:\Documents and Settings\yourlogin).
-J-Dnetbeans.winsys.dnd=true
- enable drag and drop support in the IDE. This feature is turned off by
default because of some bugs that make the behavior slow and unpredictable.
-J-Dnetbeans.popup.linuxhack=true
- under some Linux window managers, this option fixes bug
#12496, in
which contextual menus appear in the upper left corner of the screen.
-J-Dnetbeans.tab.close.button.enabled=false
- Remove the close button from tabs in the Source Editor, Explorer, and
other windows.
When you first run the NetBeans IDE Release 3.4, you can import the settings that you used
in a previous installation of the IDE. These settings include project-specific settings
and global options. If you choose not to import settings from a previous release, the
IDE begins with a set of default settings. The Import Wizard guides you through the choices.
You can import settings from the NetBeans IDE v. 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3. You can also import
settings from Sun ONE Studio (formerly Forte for Java) software versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0.
In the NetBeans IDE Release 3.2 or above and Forte for Java 3.0 or above, you can find the user
directory when running the software. Choose Help | About, and click the Detail tab.
Though it is possible to import settings from a previous IDE installation into
the NetBeans IDE Release 3.4, it is not possible to import settings from the NetBeans
IDE Release 3.4 into an earlier IDE release.
The following are some of the major unresolved issues for this release:
Use the Issuezilla bug tracking system for checking currently open bugs.
Documentation is provided for the NetBeans IDE in the form of online help.
To access all of the available online help, choose Help | Contents.
There is extensive information on the NetBeans project website, http://www.netbeans.org/.
Included on the website are a FAQ and instructions on how to subscribe to mailing lists where you can ask questions, post comments, or help others.
As NetBeans is an open-source project, you can get access to the source code, bug database, and much more
at http://www.netbeans.org/.
More information about the NetBeans IDE, Release 3.4 is available at
http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/34/index.html.
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