README

NetBeansTM IDE 3.5

Contents

Introduction
What Has Changed
Changes Since the 3.4.1 Release
Changes Between the 3.4 and 3.4.1 Releases
Changes Between the 3.3.2 and 3.4 Releases
API Changes
System Requirements
Hardware
Operating System
Software
Installation
The Launcher and Startup Parameters
Compatibility/Upgrading
Known Problems
Documentation
More Information

Introduction

Welcome to NetBeansTM IDE 3.5, a modular, standards-based integrated development environment (IDE), written in the JavaTM programming language. The NetBeans project consists of:

Read more about the NetBeans project...

You can find the latest version of this document at http://www.netbeans.org/community/planning/35/README.html.

What Has Changed

Changes Since Release 3.4.1

Work on Release 3.5 of the NetBeans IDE was focused almost entirely on IDE performance. Both startup time and general UI responsiveness have improved significantly.In addition, there are these changes:

Changes Between the 3.4 and 3.4.1 Releases

Release 3.4.1 was primarily a bug fix release, but it also had the following changes:

A more complete list of changes that occurred between versions 3.4 and 3.4.1 can be found here.

Changes Between the 3.3.2 and 3.4 Releases

The following are some of the changes that first appeared in NetBeans IDE 3.4:

A more complete list of changes that occurred between versions 3.3.2 and 3.4 can be found here.

API Changes

If you develop modules for the NetBeans project, check the NetBeans Upgrade Guide for information on API changes.

System Requirements

Since NetBeans IDE is written in pure Java, it should run on any working implementation of Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition.

Hardware

Minimum Configuration

To run NetBeans IDE, you should have at least the following:

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 128 Mbytes of memory, you can change the -J-Xmx96m parameter to -J-Xmx48m.

Recommended Configuration

The IDE's performance was tested on machines with the following configurations:

Operating System

NetBeans IDE runs on operating systems that support JavaTM 2 SDK, Standard Edition. Below is a list of platforms that NetBeans IDE has been tested on.

NetBeans IDE is also known to run on the following platforms:

If you know about any other platform that NetBeans IDE runs on, please let us know.

Software

NetBeans IDE requires a Java 2-compatible JVM. Download the latest version of the appropriate JDK version (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 JDK beta versions. You can set the -jdkhome jdk_home_dir parameter in the ide.cfg file if you want to use a different JDK version than the one detected by the installer. See The Launcher and Startup Parameters for more information.

Installation

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 JDK versions, and prompt you for which JDK version you should use, you can speed the install up by specifying a JDK version on the command line:

$ ./NetBeans.bin -is:javahome <path_to_your_jdk>

On Mac OS X

The Launcher and Startup Parameters

The IDE is run by a launcher. Launchers for several platforms are located in the bin subdirectory of the installation directory.

For UNIX systems, 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 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 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 IDE 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 a UNIX system, the location is ${HOME}/.netbeans/3.5. On Microsoft Windows systems, the default is .netbeans\3.5 beneath your default Windows profile area (e.g. c:\Documents and Settings\yourlogin).

-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.

Compatibility/Upgrading

When you first run the IDE, 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.

If you use an installer, the installer guides you through project import choices. If you run the IDE from an unpacked archive, the Settings Import Wizard appears the first time you run the IDE and guides you through the choices.

Note: The installer only recognizes previous installations where the user directory resides in the default location. It does not recognize installations where you have specified a user directory using the -userdir switch. If you would like to import settings from an IDE that the installer does not recognize, download an archive version of the IDE instead of the installer.

You can import settings from the NetBeans IDE v. 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4. You can also import settings from the Community Edition of Sun ONE Studio (formerly ForteTM for Java) software versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.

In NetBeans IDE, release 3.2 or above and Sun ONE Studio version 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 NetBeans IDE 3.5, it is not possible to import all settings from the NetBeans IDE 3.5 into an earlier IDE release.

Known Problems

The following are the major unresolved issues for this release: Use the Issuezilla bug tracking system for checking currently open bugs. Or you can find the most up-to-date version of this list at http://www.netbeans.org/community/planning/35/README.html#KnownProblems.

Documentation

Documentation is provided for the NetBeans IDE in the form of online help. To access all of the available online help, choose Help | Contents.

More Information

There is extensive information on the NetBeans project web site, http://www.netbeans.org/. Included on the web site 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/.