

NetBeans 7.4 – New and Noteworthy - rohu1990
http://wiki.netbeans.org/NewAndNoteworthyNB74

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stevoski
That features list doesn't give me much information. Can you tell me a few
highlights that would make me say, "WOW" if I tried them out?

(I ask as a IntelliJ devotee.)

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plq
Netbeans' Python support was quite nice as well -- so nice I kept a separate
Netbeans 6.9.1 just to keep Python support. However, it was never ported to
Netbeans 7 and upwards.

Sadly, that version is too old now. With no git and svn 1.7+ support, it's
become just another text editor. I hope the Python plugin gets ported to this
new version!

Its C++ support is also great, but a bit opinionated. I remember I wasn't able
to get its cmake plugin to make out-of-source builds for example.

~~~
pekk
Netbeans is formally dropping support for Python and Ruby, isn't it?

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pjmlp
That happened long time ago, as the JRuby guys left Sun.

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GoNB
Here are some plugins for other popular languages in NetBeans. I'm linking
only actively developed plugins.

Shell scripts:

    
    
      Install Official C++ plugin
    

Ruby on Rails:

    
    
      Plugin - http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/38549
    
      GitHub Mirror - https://github.com/nbruby/nbruby
    
      Quick Start - https://github.com/MarkUsProject/Markus/wiki/NetBeans
    

Python (not sure about Django):

    
    
      http://wiki.netbeans.org/Python
    
      * UPDATE * - Sorry, there doesn't seem to be active Python support anymore.
    

Lua:

    
    
      Possibly active: http://sourceforge.net/projects/luatopping/
    
      Probably inactive: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/29607/luasupport
    

NodeJS:

    
    
      https://github.com/timboudreau/nb-nodejs

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velodrome
On Linux, I experience a lot of lag when I cycle through the menus on the top.
Anybody have the same experience?

I have had this issue for the last couple of releases and I can't narrow down
the issue. It works fine on Windows.

~~~
bobthedino
Not sure if this is related to your issue, but drop down menus in Java seem to
have issues with some Linux desktop "themes" (GTK themes, I think). For
example, on CentOS the default theme causes the menus in Netbeans to be drawn
without any borders. Changing the theme to something else fixes the problem.

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skrebbel
Question for those in the know: I had expected NetBeans development to stall
after Oracle took over Sun - after all, there's not really any direct profit
coming from it. My understanding of Oracle is that they mostly think along the
lines of "no direct profit = no investment".

Why does it keep getting better?

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threeseed
I think it's more a perception problem with Oracle.

They've actually been fantastic for the Java platform and have been so for
nearly a decade now i.e. even before the Sun acquisition. It's hard to dispute
that the JVM is thriving right now with plenty of innovation amongst the
various languages. And most of us were really happy to have their JRockit work
(especially G1GC) embedded back into the core runtime when they could have
continued to charge for it.

And people need to ask if things are really so bad with their OSS projects
e.g. OpenOffice, MySQL, DTrace etc. Sure they have tightened control over
copyrights but it's not like they have actively screwed their customers if
anything the projects seem in a lot better shape.

~~~
empire29
Don't forget VirtualBox; IMO it beats out the competing commercial products

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Qerub
VMware Fusion is much faster than VirtualBox:
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vmware_vi...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vmware_virtualbox_osxcpu&num=1)

~~~
GravityWell
Not sure what you mean by "much" faster. Most of the benchmarks have
fractional differences. I think comparing an Apple only, commercial program,
to a free and open source multi-platform program, VirtualBox would "win" for a
lot of people, because it's not just about benchmarks.

~~~
pbsdp
> _And what 's the point of comparing the performance of an Apple only,
> commercial program, to a free and open source multi-platform program_.

If I have a Mac and need to virtualize things, 'free and open source' doesn't
really matter.

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blinkingled
For a pure Java UI app - NetBeans 7.4 beta looks and performs acceptably. This
is on a fast SSD with 16Gb RAM but still the fluidity of workflows has
improved a lot. For example I just created a JSF based Enterprise Java app and
modify/rebuild/redeploy were pleasantly fast. So was the code completion. Got
contextual help on CSS properties as well! If this continues to rock I might
dump Eclipse which has grown to be too complex, slow and disorienting.

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sgt
NetBeans is far from perfect but it is a pretty good development environment,
so I'm glad to see things are happening on that front.

For 2014, I predict that Java will make a comeback in so called trendy
circles, and it will also get more attention on HN.

Java 8 will bring less boiler plate code and more expressive code, and
hopefully the general development cycle will get shorter. Java EE 7 is quite
interesting for the type of development I do.

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paullth
Really looking forward to angular support improvements. Does anyone know of
any plans/plugins that might bring sublime text-ish multi cursor editing to
netbeans? Rectangular selection is, erm, all right. But I do seem to spend a
lot of time with netbeans and subl open at the same time.

~~~
rohu1990
multi cursors ..I too really wish they where part of Netbeans !

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amalag
One issue I was having was it's support for Java 6 because Java 7 was not
handling Retina screens correctly. Or is that taken care of?

BTW Git diffing between revisions is very cool, I used to have some custom
scripts which would call meld to do that.

~~~
rsynnott
Netbeans 7.3's support? It works fine on Java 6, though it will only
grudgingly use it if 7 is installed. If you're on MacOS (assuming that from
the retina screen), then, in /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans
7.3.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf

add the line

netbeans_jdkhome="/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home"

(Yes, the configuration lives _inside_ the application bundle. Lovely.)

~~~
amalag
Yes I have done this for 7.3, but I tried a Netbeans beta and it said Java 6
is no longer supported.

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zalew
kinda offtopic, but on a related note: is it me or has Eclipse development
stalled? I fail to find any noteworthy list of features for 4.3, and I don't
remember any exciting changes during last version upgrade except growing into
a bigger resources hog leaking memory like diarrhea.

those Netbeans features look really cool, any experience with Python plugins?
how does it compare to PyDev/Aptana?

~~~
JVerstry
Several years ago, I tried NetBeans vs Eclipse and chose NetBeans altough it
was far from perfect, but Eclispe was not better. The GUI was better.

I do not regret my choice. NetBeans has always progressively improved on its
weaknesses, releases after releases. I revisited Eclispe a couple of times,
but was not overall convinced by it.

~~~
harrytuttle
Does it do incremental compilation now? One of the killers for me with
NetBeans (and Visual Studio) was the compilation waits. I'd swap back from
eclipse in an instance if they do that.

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JVerstry
It has for a long time. Just invoke the 'Build Project' (F11) functionality,
instead of the 'Clean & Build Project' one (Shift+F11).

Or if you mean dynamic recompilation of your code as you type it to warn you
of possible errors, then yes, it does that too...

~~~
harrytuttle
Excellent. Thanks for the information.

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devsatish
IMO, the best practical feature about Netbeans is easy code-indenting, while
writing large HTML/JS code.

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__xtrimsky
I use Netbeans for PHP and I love it.

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Kiro
I use NetBeans for everything and this looks really good.

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keda
great to see nb moving forward. I've been a user since 5.x. it's serving me
pretty well so far.

