[ANNOUNCE] Apache NetBeans 12.0 Released

Apache NetBeans 12.0 adds support for the latest Java language features, integrates new code donations from Oracle for Java Web development, enhances its best of breed Apache Maven tooling, brings multiple enhancements for users of Gradle, includes built-in features for Payara and WildFly for the first time, introduces new out of the box templates for JavaFX, upgrades and extends its PHP editor, provides new dark look and feel options, and includes a wide range of fixes.

All features provided by Apache NetBeans are supported out of the box, without additional plugins needing to be installed, and all for free. Apache NetBeans 12.0 is the first LTS release of NetBeans as a top level Apache project.

We would like to thank all contributors, the community, and the Apache Software Foundation for the great co-operation and enthusiasm enabling this complex and exciting project to continue to inspire and be of use to developers all over the world.

New & noteworthy features of the 12.0 release:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb120/index.html

Downloads:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb120/nb120.html

Feel free to share the good news!

Posted at 04:48PM Jun 09, 2020 by Geertjan in Technology  |   | 

Newly Identified Inactive Malware Campaign: Impact on Apache NetBeans

Researchers at GitHub have identified 26 projects on GitHub that have been infected by malware[1]. The initial point of infection is undetermined and all activity with the malware has been shut down. The malware relied on project templates generated by Apache NetBeans using an older customized Apache Ant-based build system that has been in limited use since 2006. This does not impact users of other build systems like Apache Maven or Gradle or even most Apache Ant users. The majority of Apache NetBeans projects leverage native build tool integrations that are shared with continuous integration systems. With over 44 million repositories hosted on GitHub[2], the scope of these 26 projects looks isolated, these projects have been set to private, and their owners contacted, while GitHub has not had reason to contact the NetBeans community about this, indicating that this has no significant impact on the NetBeans community.

Note: Software Supply Chain attacks are not unique to any IDE and the NetBeans community will continue to monitor the threat landscape to keep developers safe and aware. Be aware[3] that any build system that you use when developing applications, with any IDE or build system, can be infiltrated by malware. Always make sure that the files you check into your versioning system are your own or that you know where they come from and what they do.

Related references:

1. https://securitylab.github.com/research/octopus-scanner-malware-open-source-supply-chain
2. https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-tops-40-million-developers-as-python-data-science-machine-learning-popularity-surges/
3. http://wiki.apidesign.org/wiki/Malware

Posted at 11:24AM Jun 01, 2020 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

When will Apache NetBeans 12.0 be released?

Apache NetBeans 12.0 will be released once many people:

1. Download Apache NetBeans 12.0 Beta 4: bit.ly/download-12-0-beta-4
   
   
2. Try it out. Here is an overview of the newest features, though incomplete: cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Apache+NetBeans+12.0
   
   
3. Fill in this very quick survey: bit.ly/12-0-community-acceptance-survey

Posted at 02:16PM May 19, 2020 by Geertjan in Technology  |   | 

[ANNOUNCE] Apache NetBeans 11.3 Released

The Apache NetBeans team is pleased to announce the release of Apache NetBeans 11.3. Apache NetBeans is a full IDE for Java SE, Java EE, PHP and JavaScript development with some Groovy language support.

Apache NetBeans 11.3 is the third Apache NetBeans release outside the Apache Incubator and the third release of the new quarterly release cycle. The LTS release of the Apache NetBeans 11 cycle is Apache NetBeans 11.0. The 11.3 release has not been as heavily tested as the LTS release. Use 11.3 to access the latest features and to provide feedback for the next LTS release, scheduled for April 2020.

New & noteworthy features of the 11.3 release:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb113/index.html

Downloads:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb113/nb113.html

Feel free to share the good news!

Posted at 02:55PM Mar 04, 2020 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

Apache NetBeans 11.3-beta2 is Ready for Testing!

Eric Barboni, our Release Manager of 11.3, produced Apache NetBeans 11.3-beta2 build the other day. It is available for testing!

Those using the Snap distribution and would like to give it a try:

sudo snap refresh --channel=edge netbeans

Posted at 07:05PM Feb 03, 2020 by lkishalmi in Technology  |  Comments [2]  | 

Released: NetBeans 11.2 Update 1

This release is identical to 11.2 except for backported fixes for:

[NETBEANS-3257] Fixed issue on refactoring rename of java method (and potentially other nb-javac issues)

[NETBEANS-3335] Enhance robustness of HTML Lexer - enter key doesn't work in certain files

[NETBEANS-3290] Fix common.xml causing layer build problems in RCP applications

Use the Plugin Manager under the Tools menu to update 11.2 to 11.2 Update 1.

Posted at 05:27PM Dec 03, 2019 by Geertjan in Technology  |  Comments [1]  | 

NetBeans 11.3 is Shaping up Nicely

One month has passed since NetBeans 11.2 had been released. There are 82 new PR-s made it to the master branch so far. We usually have a, not necessary intentional, "theme" for each release. I'd say the theme is for 11.3 is: "Remove the Rust".

Our code and libraries spent long time in the transit. Many of our modules were still compiling against Java 1.6 and/or used ancient versions of third party libraries. 11.3 improved a lot on this front and there are still many PR are in the queue to carry that on.
Without trying to be complete, here is a small list of changes what's coming:

- Jgit Library Update
- ASM, PostgreSQL, JUnit5 and Other Library Updates.
- PHP Fixes
- HTML Lexer Stability Improvements
- JSF 2.3 Support
- Gradle Tooling 6.0
- Several Cleanups, Remove Compile Warnings

On the UI Side:
- Return of Dark Metal and Dark Nimbus Look and Feel
- Experimental support for Flatlaf Look and Feel

On Gradle Side:
- Test Output is Channeled Back to the IDE
- Added Project Reload Action
- Elephant Icons Finally Replace the old Ones

Posted at 10:51PM Nov 30, 2019 by lkishalmi in General  |   | 

[ANNOUNCE] Apache NetBeans 11.2 Released

The Apache NetBeans team is pleased to announce the release of Apache NetBeans 11.2. Apache NetBeans is a full IDE for Java SE, Java EE, PHP and JavaScript development with some Groovy language support.

Apache NetBeans 11.2 is the second Apache NetBeans release outside the Apache Incubator and the second release of the new quarterly release cycle. The LTS release of the Apache NetBeans 11 cycle is Apache NetBeans 11.0. The 11.2 release has not been as heavily tested as the LTS release. Use 11.2 to access the latest features and to provide feedback for the next LTS release, scheduled for April 2020.

New & noteworthy features of the 11.2 release:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb112/index.html

Downloads:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb112/nb112.html

Feel free to share the good news!

Posted at 01:30PM Nov 01, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

NetBeans at Oracle Code One 2019

An Apache NetBeans schedule for those going to Oracle Code One 2019 next week!

Saturday, September 14

19:00 Hang out in the Thirsty Bear in Howard Street

Monday, September 16

• Why You Should Be Coding with the NetBeans IDE [BOF1321]
  Mark Stephens, Developer, IDRsolutions
  Ethan Price, Developer, IDRsolutions
  02:30 PM - 03:15 PM | Moscone South - Room 305
• Java IDE Wars [DEV1375]
  Ken Fogel, Teacher, Dawson College
  Scott Selikoff, Software Developer, Selikoff Solutions, LLC
  Jeanne Boyarsky, Developer, CodeRanch
  04:00 PM - 04:45 PM | Moscone South - Room 304
• Hacking the NetBeans IDE [BOF1338]
  Mark Stephens, IDR Solutions
  06:00 PM - 06:45 PM | Moscone South - Room 309
• Hacking the NetBeans Profiler [BOF4170]
  Ryan Cuprak, Formulation Applications R&D Development Senior Manager, Dassault Systemes
  06:00 PM - 06:45 PM | Moscone South - Room 305

Tuesday, September 17

• Getting Started with Deep Learning for Enterprise Java Developers [DEV2126]
  Zoran Sevarac, Associate Professor, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organisational Sciences
  Suyash Joshi, Developer Marketing Director, Oracle
  12:30 PM - 01:15 PM | Moscone South - Room 308
• Testing on Oracle Autonomous Database with Homomorphic Encryption, Using NetBeans and Java - BYOL [HOL3196]
  Simon Bain, Founder & CTO, ShieldIO
  12:30 PM - 02:30 PM | Moscone West - Room 3024C

Wednesday, September 18

• Apache NetBeans: Its Status and Future [DEV2506]
  Geertjan Wielenga, Product Manager, Oracle
  Mark Stephens, Developer, IDRsolutions
  Ethan Price, Developer, IDRsolutions
  06:00 PM - 06:45 PM | Moscone South - Room 206

Thursday, September 19

• Testing on Oracle Autonomous Database with Homomorphic Encryption, Using NetBeans and Java - BYOL [HOL3196]
  Simon Bain, Founder & CTO, ShieldIO
  09:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Moscone West - Room 3024C
• 19:00 Hang out in the Thirsty Bear in Howard Street

Posted at 08:24AM Sep 11, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

What to do with JavaFX and OpenJFX in Apache NetBeans?

If Apache NetBeans runs on JDK 8, a range of Ant-based JavaFX sample applications are available in NetBeans to help you get started and learn about JavaFX. However, if NetBeans does not run on JDK 8, the available Ant-based JavaFX samples don't work (can't be created) but there's no point in working on fixing that since from JDK 11 onwards JavaFX is no longer part of the JDK and Maven/Gradle-based OpenJFX samples are obvious candidates for integration into NetBeans instead.

However, how should that be handled in NetBeans? Before Apache NetBeans 11.1, there was no integration with OpenJFX. Only JavaFX projects and samples were built into NetBeans, which led to a great deal of confusion since when someone sets up an environment from scratch today, they're unlikely to have installed JDK 8. Much more likely, they'll have JDK 11 or 12 and then those JavaFX projects and samples in NetBeans cannot be used, i.e., when you try to create those samples, while running NetBeans on anything other than JDK 8, you're simply told in the wizard that you have the wrong JDK. And then you somehow need to find out that the best thing to do next is use the OpenJFX documentation to set up the OpenJFX samples in NetBeans.

That is suboptimal and so Gluon integrated their two sample applications into Apache NetBeans 11.1, i.e., in the most recent release:

https://github.com/apache/netbeans/tree/master/javafx/openjfx.samples

That is a step forward but still suboptimal, as explained here by Jaroslav Tulach:

https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/1241#issuecomment-491357016

That entire new module is not needed. Literally, all that needs to be done is that this file needs to be updated with two new template registrations:

https://github.com/apache/netbeans/blob/master/java/maven/src/org/netbeans/modules/maven/newproject/MavenWizardIterator.java

And, literally, this is all that needs to be added there, since the two OpenJFX samples are on Maven Central and as pointed out above, "NetBeans has a nice support for creating wizards over Maven archetypes."

@TemplateRegistration(folder = ArchetypeWizards.TEMPLATE_FOLDER, 
position = 925, 
displayName = "#LBL_Maven_FXML_Archetype", 
iconBase = "org/netbeans/modules/maven/resources/jaricon.png", 
description = "javafx.html")
@Messages("LBL_Maven_FXML_Archetype=FXML JavaFX Maven Archetype")
public static WizardDescriptor.InstantiatingIterator<?> openJFXFML() {
    return ArchetypeWizards.definedArchetype("org.openjfx", "javafx-archetype-fxml", "0.0.2", null, LBL_Maven_FXML_Archetype());
}

@TemplateRegistration(folder = ArchetypeWizards.TEMPLATE_FOLDER, 
position = 926, 
displayName = "#LBL_Maven_Simple_Archetype", 
iconBase = "org/netbeans/modules/maven/resources/jaricon.png", 
description = "javafx.html")
@Messages("LBL_Maven_Simple_Archetype=Simple JavaFX Maven Archetype")
public static WizardDescriptor.InstantiatingIterator<?> openJFXSimple() {
    return ArchetypeWizards.definedArchetype("org.openjfx", "javafx-archetype-simple", "0.0.2", null, LBL_Maven_Simple_Archetype());
}

That literally is all that is needed to be added to the Java source file above, instead of having a completely new module, which doesn't integrate as neatly as the above with the Apache NetBeans infrastructure. (And this is a small tip for anyone else wanting to make their Maven archetypes available to NetBeans: the above is literally all you need to do.)

However, the fundamental question remains: how do we notify users of Apache NetBeans that they should be using OpenJFX and not JavaFX? Maybe we should simply remove all JavaFX projects and samples, however that would be unfortunate for anyone using JDK 8. Or maybe the solution is to create a category named "Legacy" in the New Project dialog and then put all JavaFX projects and samples there, so that it's clear that they're not recommended, while still having them available for JDK 8 users?

Posted at 09:29AM Aug 25, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

Simplified Apache NetBeans Welcome Screen

To simplify the Welcome Screen and, in particular, replace all links to netbeans.org with netbeans.apache.org, I have created this issue and pull request:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NETBEANS-3020

https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/1457

All references to netbeans.org are replaced with equivalents at netbeans.apache.org and the News column, which pointed to netbeans.org, is removed from the tab below, while the Blogs column is renamed to News, since newsworthy items now come from here, i.e., from this blog:

Also, the Featured Demo on the first tab is removed, best to have as few links to external places as possible, i.e., help reduce potential points of failure, especially here where having that demo in the page doesn't add all that much while removing it reduces the need for external URL calls that could cause problems and slow things down.

Posted at 09:08AM Aug 24, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |  Comments [1]  | 

LSP Client demo - (ba)sh language server

Below is a scenario by Jan Lahoda, the creator of LSP integration for Apache NetBeans, for how to integrate the bash language server with Apache NetBeans, including syntax highlighting.

Setting Up

1. Install npm (and node.js). On Ubuntu, e.g., do "apt install npm", though something different will be needed on Mac OS X.

2. Create a directory in which we are going to work, have a terminal opened in that directory.

3. Install the bash-language-server:

   npm install bash-language-server

   On Mac OSX:

   npm install bash-language-server --unsafe-perm

   This will install the server into the current directory.

4. Try the bash server:

   ./node_modules/bash-language-server/bin/main.js --help

   You should see something like this:

   Usage:
     bash-language-server start
     bash-language-server -h | --help
     bash-language-server -v | --version

5. Create a NetBeans module. Create a File Type (Module Development/File Type), mime type: text/sh, file extension: sh

Syntax Coloring via TextMate

1. Download the TextMate grammar file here, and put it alongside the newly created DataObject:

   https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/vscode/master/extensions/shellscript/syntaxes/shell-unix-bash.tmLanguage.json

2. Add "TextMate Lexer" as a dependency of the module.

3. Into the DataObject add this annotation:

   @GrammarRegistration(grammar="shell-unix-bash.tmLanguage.json", mimeType="text/sh")

   GrammarRegistration is:

   import org.netbeans.modules.textmate.lexer.api.GrammarRegistration;

This should lead to syntax highlighted source for .sh bash files taken from the TextMate grammar file.

Language Support via the Language Server

Next, we need to add language support using the language server.

1. Add "LSP Client" and "MIME Lookup API" as dependencies of the module.

2. Create a new class, ShellClient, in the module, put this into it, (replacing "<path-to-bash-language-server>" with the absolute path to "node_modules/bash-language-server"):

   import java.io.IOException;
   import org.netbeans.api.editor.mimelookup.MimeRegistration;
   import org.netbeans.modules.lsp.client.spi.LanguageServerProvider;
   import org.openide.util.Exceptions;
   import org.openide.util.Lookup;
   
   @MimeRegistration(mimeType="text/sh", service=LanguageServerProvider.class)
   public class ShellClient implements LanguageServerProvider {
   
      @Override
      public LanguageServerDescription startServer(Lookup lkp) {
          try {
              Process p = new ProcessBuilder("<path-to-bash-language-server>/bin/main.js", "start").start();
              return LanguageServerDescription.create(p.getInputStream(), p.getOutputStream(), p);
          } catch (IOException ex) {
              Exceptions.printStackTrace(ex);
              return null;
          }
      }
   
   }

   You may need to explicitly call node in the above code, i.e., as follows:

   Process p = new ProcessBuilder(
           "/usr/local/bin/node", 
           "<path-to-bash-language-server>/bin/main.js", 
           "start").start();

3. Build and start the module.

Caveat: the language server is started only for files that are inside a project, so create (any) new project, and inside the project, put a shell file. E.g. copy "bin/netbeans" as "test.sh" into the project. Open it in the editor - there should be syntax highlighting, Navigator, and code completion should show something, etc.

Posted at 03:25PM Aug 17, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

Why Does Apache NetBeans Need Its Own Parsers?

A question was asked on the Apache NetBeans mailing list: "I was just curious about the theoretical aspect of parsing. Isn't there a unified parsing API, using ANTLR/lex/yacc which can parse any language given a grammar for it? Why do we use a different parsing implementation (like the Graal JS parser in this instance) when a unified approach will help us support lots of languages easily?"

Tim Boudreau, involved in NetBeans from its earliest hours, responds, in the thread linked above:

Posted at 12:11PM Aug 06, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |   | 

PHP 7.4 Support

Hi all. Today, we will briefly show you about PHP7.4 support which will be available in the next NetBeans version i.e. NetBeans 11.2.

First of all, I strongly hope that new features are tested by PHP users before NetBeans 11.2 is released because there should be bugs. Definitely, we need your help! If you are interested in them, please test it. You can download a dev version here. Then, we could merge new changes quickly thanks to our committer Tomas Mysik. Thanks a lot for your review, Tomas!

PHP 7.4 Support

To enable it, you have to set PHP 7.4 as the PHP version of your PHP project. (Right-click your project node, click Project Properties.)

NetBeans provides support for the new syntaxes for PHP 7.4.

Null Coalescing Assignment Operator

Spread Operator in Array Expression

Numeric Literal Separator

Typed Properties 2.0

Arrow Functions 2.0

New Hints

Suggestion for converting a simple closure to an arrow function

Suggestion for using combined assignment operators

Of course, code completion, formatting, go to declaration, and mark occurrence features for the above syntaxes should also be fixed.

That's all for today. As always, please test it. You can download a development version from Jenkins Build. If you find some issues or enhancements, please report them to JIRA with your exact steps to reproduce them. (Components: php - Editor). Thanks.

Posted at 02:42PM Jul 25, 2019 by Junichi in PHP  |   | 

[ANNOUNCE] Apache NetBeans 11.1 Released

The Apache NetBeans team is pleased to announce the release of Apache NetBeans 11.1. Apache NetBeans is a full IDE for Java SE, Java EE, PHP and JavaScript development with some Groovy language support.

Apache NetBeans 11.1 is the first Apache NetBeans release outside the Apache Incubator and the first release of the new quarterly release cycle. The LTS release of the Apache NetBeans 11 cycle is Apache NetBeans 11.0. The 11.1 release has not been as heavily tested as the LTS release. Use 11.1 to access the latest features and to provide feedback for the next LTS release, scheduled for April 2020.

New & noteworthy features of the 11.1 release:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb111/index.html

Downloads:

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb111/nb111.html

Feel free to share the good news!

Posted at 01:19PM Jul 22, 2019 by Geertjan in General  |   |