August 17, 2009

NetBeans 6.7 was launched, what brings with him?




NetBeans 6.7
On June 2009 Netbeans released the final version of 6.7. You can find more about here, on their release page. You can download it here.
From the beginning I must say that I am a big fun of NetBeans. I used since it was named Forte for Java version 2. I appreciate also Eclipse, but don't start here a flame on why I consider Netbeans superior.
From the release page we can see major topics on the improvements of new features brought to us by this version. You can read yourself about them. Here is my only humble opinion on this release.
Overview. The first impression is that is faster than its predecessors. The difference is visible in usage. Also, they added a feature to enable/disable features with you don't work.
Other languages than Java. Since I don't work too much with either of them I can't provide a full coverage. Still I am happy that I can have in the same IDE some tools for managing this kind of projects. That's cool. I tried PHP support, which I found quite good. Comparing with dedicated tools on that, it manages good. I found it fine for may needs. All that languages were supported before. Thought new valuable features were added for all of them. I would call here the sql editing and PHPUnit in php scripts, remote debugging for Ruby, code complettion on Groovy, profiling and QT libraries support for C/C++. Just to name few of them which are really consistent.
GlassFish. Nice that v3 is supported now. You have code completion, there is also a nice plug-in called GlassFish v3 enabler, quite usefull. You have also v2 version support.
Maven. That's really a very good thing. Maven support is much better now. You have a viewer for dependency graphs, you can configure a lot of your settings through UI. Also, you have archetypes for Java EE projects. The most appealing thing on that is that you can easily use your NetBeans project in another IDE. Practically nothing need to be done to do that. That's impressive. For the ones who want to know more on Maven they should take a look here.
Kenai. The most appealing to me. Kenai is a community similar to sourceforge, I think. But the best thing is that is fully integrated with NetBeans. For start up project is increddible. You have almost everything you can wish: bug tracking, wiki, dedicated place for a site, IM chats, etc. Take a loot at kenai.com. It worths the effort.
Conclusion. This release means "get into community" to my. Kenai is very apealing. In the same time they did not lost focus on continuous improvements. I believe everybody can found a new good reason to use NetBeans.
PS: for Eclipse developers now there's a button called "Synchronize editor with views" ;)

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