Creating a Kenai Project in NetBeans IDE 6.7
This tutorial demonstrates how to use NetBeans IDE 6.7 to create a project on Kenai.
When you create a project on Kenai, you create an environment that is designed to help developers that are working
together on a project.
When you are a member of a project, you have access to a development infrastructure
that includes source code hosting services, issue tracking and various communication channels to help developers stay connected.
Many of the services provided by Kenai are fully integrated and accessible directly from the NetBeans IDE.
There are two ways to create a project on Kenai from the IDE, and how you decide to create a project largely
depends upon the project's requirements and how far along you are in the development cycle.
If you already have a NetBeans project, you can use the Share on Kenai wizard to create a project on Kenai for that project,
but you can also create a project on Kenai before you have any source code.
For example, you might want to create a project and capture the project requirements on the project wiki,
collect required files in an archive for downloading and add members to the project before any coding starts.
After you create the project, other developers can view details about the project on the project page on Kenai and
they can open the project and download the sources from within the IDE.
For most projects, developers do not have to be members of a project to view the sources and project pages.
Any developers that are interested in working together and contributing to a project can request to be added as a project member.
The project administrator can add members and assign roles from the project page on Kenai.
In addition to creating a new project, you can open and retrieve the sources of any Kenai project
from within the IDE. For most projects, you do not need to be a member of the project to open a Kenai project.
For more, see Opening a Kenai Project in NetBeans IDE 6.7.
Watch the Video of Creating a Kenai Project in NetBeans IDE.
Contents
To follow this tutorial, you need the following software and resources.
Before starting this tutorial you may want to familiarize yourself with
the following Kenai documentation.
Creating an Account on Kenai
To create a project on Kenai you must first create an account at Kenai.com.
You cannot create an account from within the IDE.
You can skip this exercise if you already have an account.
- Choose Team > Login to Kenai from the main menu.
- Click Sign up now to open the Kenai sign up page in your browser.
Alternatively, you can open https://kenai.com/people/new in your browser.
- Fill in the account details in the form. Click Create Account.
After you submit the form you will receive an email to confirm your registration.
- Confirm your registration.
After you complete the registration process you can login to Kenai.com and modify your profile
by clicking Edit My Profile under Profile in the left column.
For more about editing your profile, watch the Setting Up Your User Profile screencast.
You can find the screencast listed under Screencasts & Tutorials on the Kenai help pages.
Logging in to Kenai
When you have an account on Kenai you can login directly from the IDE.
- Choose Team > Login to Kenai to open the login dialog box.
Alternatively, you can open click Login to Kenai in the Kenai dashboard (Window > Kenai Dashboard from the main menu).
- Enter your username and password. Click Login.
When you click Login, the Kenai dashboard opens in the IDE.
The Kenai dashboard displays your open Kenai projects and enables you to easily
work with project issues and download project sources.
Creating a Project on Kenai
When you create a project on Kenai, you create more than a version-controlled repository for your source code.
For each project Kenai provides resources and services that are important when working on a project,
especially when there are many people collaborating on a project. Each person is a
member of the project, and the members can have different roles. Some members will be developers, but there might also be people
responsible for designing the user interface, testing quality, writing documentation, managing the build cycle, etc.
A Kenai project can help all the project members to stay connected and informed as the project develops.
A project can develop in different ways. In some cases, in particular when starting a project from scratch,
you might want to set up the project infrastructure before any coding starts.
In other cases, a project might already be started and some code written, but the project has grown in scope and
additional people need to be brought in to work on the project.
Note.
Projects on Kenai are available to the public and are covered by the project's license and the
Kenai Terms of Use.
Sharing a Local NetBeans Project
If you have a local NetBeans project, you can share the project with other developers by using the Share on Kenai wizard.
The wizard enables you to easily share a single NetBeans project and automatically initializes the root folder of the project
as the root folder of the local Subversion repository.
Note. You cannot use the Share on Kenai wizard to add a NetBeans project to an existing repository.
When you use the wizard to add the project to Kenai, the IDE performs the following tasks.
- creates a project on Kenai
- creates a Bugzilla issue tracker for the project
- creates a remote Subversion repository
- commits the project sources to the remote repository (optional)
- initializes the local directory containing the project as the local Subversion repository
Note.
If you want to specify a different location for the local repository or use a different version control system
(for example, Mercurial), you should use the New Kenai Project wizard to Create a New Project on Kenai.
To share a local project on Kenai, perform the following steps.
- Login to Kenai (if not already logged in).
- Choose File > Open Project and open the project that you want to share.
- Right-click the project node in the Projects window and choose Share on Kenai.
Alternatively, if you do not want to open the project you can choose
Team > Kenai > Share Local Project on Kenai from the main menu.
You can then browse to the location of the project that you want to share.
- Check that the Project Location is correct.
- Type the Kenai Project Name.
The project name is used to generate the project page on Kenai.com.
By default the IDE uses the name of the NetBeans project.
- Type the Project Title.
The project title is the name that is displayed on the project page on Kenai.com and in the IDE.
- Type a Project Description (optional).
- Select a Project License.
You must select a license, but you can change the license later.
Members who participate and contribute to the project must also agree to the terms of the project's license.
- (Optional) Select Commit the source into the repository.
If this option is selected, the IDE will add the sources to the remote repository when you click Finish.
This can take some time if your project has a lot of sources.
- Click Finish.
When you click Finish, the IDE creates the project on Kenai and adds
a node for the project to the Kenai dashboard.
When you create a project you are automatically added as a project member with the role of administrator.
If you are a member of a project, the project name is displayed in bold in the Kenai dashboard.
If you expand the Sources node under your project,
you can see that the new project is listed as a project in the repository.
Creating a New Project
This exercise describes how to create a new project on Kenai when you do not have a NetBeans project available or you
are not ready to add sources to a remote repository.
You can create the project and start using the Kenai services first, and commit the sources later when you are ready.
Note. You might also want to choose this option if you want more flexibility
to choose your source code management system or to explicitly specify a location for your local repository.
- Login to Kenai (if not already logged in).
- Choose Team > Kenai > New Kenai Project from the main menu to open the Create Kenai Project wizard.
- Type the Kenai Project Name.
The project name is used to generate the project page on Kenai.com.
- Type the Project Title.
The project title is the name that is displayed on the project page on Kenai.com and in the IDE.
- Type a Project Description (optional).
- Select a Project License.
You must select a license, but you can change the license later.
Members who participate and contribute to the project must also agree to the terms of the project's license.
- Click Next.
- Select the type of Source Code Repository from the dropdown menu.
The IDE has integrated support for Subversion and Mercurial.
If you want to use a different version control system, you can choose External from the dropdown menu
and specify the URL of the repository.
You can choose None if you do not need a repository or you want to create one later.
- Type a Repository Name for the remote repository.
The address of the remote repository will be the project name with ~subversion appended.
- Specify an empty directory on your local system for the local repository.
- Select an Issue Tracking system (or choose None if you want to decide later). Click Finish.
When you click Finish, the IDE does the following:
- creates a project page on Kenai.com for your project
- enables the Kenai services for the project
- creates the remote repository
- initializes the local repository
The IDE displays a success dialog after your project is created.
If you want to create a NetBeans project immediately, you
can click Create New Project in the success dialog to open the New Project wizard.
If you want to open the project page on Kenai.com, click Go to Kenai.com.
The IDE adds a node for the new project to the Kenai Dashboard (Ctrl+8).
The Kenai Dashboard provides an overview of Kenai projects that you have opened.
You can quickly access the project's pages on Kenai, view project issues and checkout sources
from the Kenai Dashboard.
After your project on Kenai is created, you can immediately continue working on your project in the IDE.
Committing Sources
Kenai offers dedicated version control repositories as one of the services available to hosted projects.
Kenai supports version control using Subversion, Mercurial and Git, but Git is currently not supported in the IDE.
If you shared a NetBeans project, the sources for your project are now under version control.
If you created a new project, you can start adding sources to the local repository you specified in the wizard.
The IDE recognizes when sources are in a local repository and
you can perform version control tasks from the Projects, Files and Favorites windows.
For more about Kenai support for version control systems, see the Kenai documentation on
Source Code Management.
This exercise demonstrates how to commit files to a remote Subversion repository on Kenai.
- Open the Projects window in the IDE.
The names of source files that are new to the repository are green.
The badge on the directories indicates that they contain files that need to be committed.
- Right-click the file or directory that you want to commit to the repository and choose Subversion > Commit.
- Enter a message that describes the commit in the Commit dialog. Click Commit.
If you are making a commit that relates to a specific issue, you can identify the issue in the Commit dialog
by opening the Update Issue panel and specifying the issue tracker and issue id.
You can select Resolve as FIXED to change the status of the issue to Resolved.
For details on using Subversion in NetBeans IDE, see the
Guided Tour of Subversion.
Managing Project Settings
When you create a project on Kenai, you are automatically assigned the role of project administrator.
The project administrator is allowed to modify project details such as the project title and licenses
and configure the Kenai features that are enabled for the project.
Each project on Kenai has a project page where the administrator can manage the project settings.
You cannot edit the settings in the IDE, but you can click the details link for
the project in the Kenai dashboard to open the project page in your browser.
To edit project settings you need to be logged in to Kenai.com.
For more details, see the following Kenai.com documentation:
Adding Members to the Project
The project administrator can add members to a project and assign each member a role.
The administrator can add any registered Kenai user to a project as a member.
A Kenai user can become a member of any project by bookmarking the project.
A user that bookmarks a project is added to the project as a member in the role of Observer.
For definitions of the different roles, see the Kenai documentation for the
Members Tab.
To add a member to a project, perform the following steps.
- Click details next to the project name in the Kenai dashboard to open the project page on Kenai.com.
- Click Manage This Project on the project page.
- Click the Members tab to view a list of project members.
- Click Add Member. Enter the Kenai username and select a Role from the dropdown list. Click Add.
As the level of involvement of members change, an administrator can change the role of project members
by clicking edit next to the name of the member and selecting a role from the dropdown list.
The administrator can also modify the default permissions assigned to each role.
Setting Role Permissions
The level of access that registered (and unregistered) Kenai users have to each project feature is determined
by the permissions assigned to a role.
The project administrator can control the permissions for project members by assigning each member a role.
For each feature, the administrator can also modify the default permissions assigned to each role.
For more details about how to configure the project features and roles, see the following Kenai documentation:
The Features tab enables you to assign permissions to roles for each of the Kenai features available to the project.
- Click details next to the project name in the Kenai dashboard to open the project page on Kenai.com.
- Click Manage This Project on the project page.
- Click the Features tab to view a list of Kenai features available for the project.
- Click More next to the feature you want to modify and choose Set Role Permissions.
- Select the checkbox in the matrix to associate the permissions and roles.
See Also
For additional information on using NetBeans IDE in a collaborative environment, see the following tutorials.
