NetBeans IDE is a modular, standards-based integrated development environment (IDE), written in the Java programming language. The NetBeans project consists of an open source IDE written in the Java programming language and an application platform, which can be used as a generic framework to build any kind of application.
NetBeans IDE 6.1 is a significant update to NetBeans IDE 6.0 and includes the following changes:
For information about the main development features in NetBeans IDE, see the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Information page.
NetBeans IDE 6.1 supports the following technologies and has been tested with the following application servers. If you plan to use versions of JBoss, WebLogic, or Struts other than those explicitly listed, please note that you may encounter unpredictable IDE behavior as a result of the technologies being external interfaces which the project team has little or no control over.
Note: If you are using the GlassFish application server, it is recommended that you run GlassFish V2 in order to work with NetBeans IDE 6.1.
NetBeans IDE runs on operating systems that support the Java VM (Virtual Machine) and has been tested on the platforms listed below.
Note: The IDE's minimum screen resolution is 1024x768 pixels.
NetBeans IDE is also known to run on the following platforms:
Note: While the above system requirements apply to most configurations of the IDE, some areas of NetBeans Web and Java EE support are particularly demanding on system resources, especially when used in combination with various application servers. For best results when developing Web and Java EE applications, make sure that your system meets at least the recommended system requirements.
NetBeans IDE runs on the J2SE (Java SE Development Kit) JDK 5.0 Update 14 and higher (including JDK 6.0), which consists of the Java Runtime Environment plus developer tools for compiling, debugging, and running applications written in the Java language.
You can download the JDK for your platform from one of the sites listed below:
Note: You can download archived versions of the JDK at http://java.sun.com/products/archive/index.html.
When you first run the IDE, you can import a subset of the settings you used in previous versions of NetBeans IDE. If you choose not to import settings from a previous release, the IDE opens using the default settings.
Note: The IDE 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
--userdirswitch. 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 using the installer.Note: If you edit the Project Properties in NetBeans IDE 6.1 for a project that was created in NetBeans IDE 4.1 or earlier, the project will no longer work in the earlier NetBeans IDE versions.
There have been changes made to the database functionality in NetBeans 6.1. They are as follows:
delimiter ?? create procedure test() begin declare x tinyint; select count(*) from person into x; if x = 2 then select * from trip; end if; end?? delimiter ; call test();
NetBeans IDE 6.1 has been tested with the following databases and drivers.
Driver |
Version |
Example URL |
|---|---|---|
| JavaDB | Derby 10.3.1.4 | jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/sample
(Network) |
| Oracle | Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.3) | jdbc:oracle:thin:@//localhost:1521:ora9i |
| PostgreSQL | 8.3 Build 603 | jdbc:postgresql://jbrave-pc1.sfbay.sun.com:5432/postgres |
| MySQL | MySQL Connector/J 5.1.5 | jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/sample |
The following drivers and databases have not been formally tested, but should work based on experience.
Driver |
Version |
Example URL |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver 1.1 | jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=travel;selectMethod=cursor |
| IBM | Redistributable DB2 JDBC Type 4 driver v8 fixpack 13 |
jdbc:db2://localhost:50002/sample |
| jTDS | jTDS 1.2.1 | jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://rave-cheetah.sfbay.sun.com:1433/travel |
| DataDirect | DataDirect Connect for JDBC - 3.6 DataDirect Connect for JDBC - 3.6.07 |
jdbc:datadirect:oracle://localhost;SID=ora9ijdbc:datadirect:sqlserver://localhost:1433;DatabaseName=travel;SelectMethod=cursorjdbc:datadirect:db2://localhost:50002;databaseName=sample |
The unresolved installer issues for this release are as follows:
Description: On Solaris and Linux platforms, if the network connection is lost, installation hangs when the installer is searching for a compatible JDK in network directories.
Workaround: Restore the network connection and proceed with the installation.
Description: On Macintosh platforms, if you are using only JDK 6.0 you may experience some installation problems because this JDK version is not of FCS quality. The preferred JDK for the Mac OS is 1.5.0_07.
Description: The installer appears as the blank/grey dialog when running on Ubuntu with Beryl/Compiz/Compiz Fusion
installed.Workaround: Execute the export AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit command before running the installer.
Description: Installation stops with error during execution of the unpack200 command. This error can be caused by the Logitech Process Monitor (Webcam Effects Helper) application.
Workaround: If you have Logitech Process Monitor (Webcam Effects Helper) application (LVPrcSrv.exe) that is running on your system, switch it off before installation or uninstall.
Description: The installer freezes during installation and the following error is reported:
Unable to find unpack200Workaround: Make a symlink named
unpack200that points to/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Home/bin/unpack200. Note that the symlink must be placed in a folder in theunpack200path. For example, in the path shown above, thebinfolder is a good location.
Description: On Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 6, installation of GlassFish V2 fails when JDK 7 is used (JDK7 IcedTea 64-Bit Server VM).
Workaround: For these platforms, use JDK 5 or JDK 6.
Description: The Download page is displayed in the language which is specified as default for the used browser. If you are using a non-localized browser, it will be displayed in English. To view the Download page in Chinese, Japanese, or Brazilian Portuguese, select the relevant language from the Choose Page Language drop-down list at the top of the Download page.
Workaround: The localized Chinese, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese versions of the Firefox browser allow opening a localized Download page. To view the Download page in Chinese, Japanese, or Brazilian Portuguese, select the relevant language from the Choose Page Language drop-down list at the top of the Download page.
Description: On Windows, when Java6 is used by default and large zip files are stored on the desktop, the installation wizard does not start properly (hangs). After the user stops the installation process manually, and the installer reports that another installer instance is running.
Workaround: Before the installation, remove all big zip files from the desktop
The unresolved issues for this release are as follows:
Description: On certain Solaris x86 and Dual Core Opteron configurations, you may encounter problems starting the IDE due to a JDK bug with loading GTK
look&feellibraries.Workaround: If you encounter this behavior, specify the following command line option: -laf javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel
Description: When running the IDE with some Asian locales on Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions, the IDE's screen text may become unreadable. On certain Linux distributions multi-byte characters may display as a rectangle due to JDK font setting issues.
Workaround: Because there is no known workaround for this issue, it is recommended to use an alternative Linux distribution if you must use a locale subject to this behavior.
Description: Network communication broken on Linux with IPv6 enabled, preventing the IDE from connecting to bundled servers, Auto Update, etc.
Workaround: If this happens, run the IDE using the
-J-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true'switch. Alternatively, disable IPv6 (in /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf).For more information see: Issue #5087907.
Description:When profiling an application, the profiled application may crash when you attempt to take a memory snapshot.
Workaround: Start the application you want to profile with the -Xnoclassgc switch.
Description: When running the IDE on Solaris with JDK 6, 6u1 or 6u2, threads may become blocked for a long time and cause the editor to be unresponsive.
Workaround: Upgrade your JDK 6 installation to Update 3 or newer.
Description:When running on JDK 1.6, profiling an application with dynamic attach mode can lead to the profiled application crashing.
Workaround: Start the application you want to profile with the -Xshare:off switch.
Also see: Issue #113847.
Description: Java applications created from the Java Desktop Application project template might not be able to be run in Japanese and Chinese Linux locales with JDK 6 installed.
Workaround: Use JDK 5.0 or run projects from English locale.
Description: It can sometimes occur that after using a hint in the editor window that the insertion point in the editor disappears and you cannot type using the keyboard. This has mostly been reported on Mac OS X 10.4, but there have been some reports on some versions of Ubuntu.
Workaround: Use the mouse to open and then close a dialog window (for example, a properties dialog). This returns the focus to the editor and the insertion point and keyboard will work as normal.
Description: The cause is in the current toplink libraries used in the IDE. An issue on toplink library has been filed on it. This Glassfish issue has been fixed for Glassfish v2.1. However, NetBeans 6.1 supports glassfish v2 u2, and the fix is not in this version of Glassfish.
Workaround: Use only ASCII characters in the name of a desktop database application project or the path to that project.
Description: When using Firefox on Solaris, and sometimes on Mac OS and Windows, if multibyte or non-ascii characters are used in project name or path, and if the project encoding property is not set to utf-8 (which means these paths are in that encoding), the generated javadoc is not found or shown.
For example: In the case of a project that has euc-jp as its project encoding property on Solaris, and has project name or path using Japanese characters of that encoding, the javadoc won't be found and an error message is displayed in Firefox.
The problem is that part of the URL is UTF-8 and part is EUC-JP; the javadoc tool stores the URL in the encoding it generates for the web page, but the correct way is to generate the text in requested encoding (in this case EUC-JP) and URLs in UTF-8.
Workaround: Avoid using multibyte in the name of the project or the path to the project.
Description: The javadoc task while creating the temporary parameter file is written in default OS encoding which is MacRoman. This appears to be a Mac OS situation where the BSD and Mach parts (system & kernel calls) accept parameters in UTF-8, but OS and HFS promote themselves as MacRoman.
Workaround: Avoid using multibyte in the name of the project or the path to the project.
Description: For example, on Mac OS X 10.4. when using System.out.println in the Java code,the strings containing Japanese characters display correctly in the source code, but are displayed as question marks in the output window.
Workaround: There is no workaround at this time.
Description: An error message is displayed in the Output window or Terminal after trying to create the repository.
Note: This problem does not occur on Mac 10.5 with Mercurial 1.0 or Mercurial 0.9.5. The problem occurs on Mac 10.4 with Mercurial 0.9.5 (Mercurial 1.0 is currently not available for Mac 10.4).
Workaround: Create A Mercurial repository from command line by using the command hg init <DirectoryName>.
Description: While refactoring (removing, renaming, etc.) a Java class, the refactoring dialog displays the following error: "Module Spring Beans threw java.lang.ClassCastException: org.netbeans.editor.ext.ExtSyntaxSupport". This happens especially in a web project which was extended by the Spring Web MVC framework.
Workaround: Right-click the project node in the Projects view and click Properties. In the Project Properties dialog, select the Spring Framework category. In the Configuration Files tab, remove the web/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp file and click OK.
The unresolved Web and Java EE issues for this release are as follows:
Description: The Visual Web JSF Backwards Compatibility kit provides supplemental libraries that are required by the Visual Web designer to support projects that are based on J2SE 1.4 or J2EE 1.4. These libraries are not open source and are therefore distributed as a separate NetBeans plugin. The kit will install the following libraries that are required for J2EE 1.4 projects:
- JavaServer Faces 1.1 Reference Implementation (RI)
- Rowset Reference Implementation (RI)
- JAX-RPC libraries from JWSDP 1.6
To get the Backwards Compatibility Kit, in the main menu, choose Tools > Plugins.
Description: Woodstock 4.1 and 4.2 JSF Components Release Notes are located on the Project Woodstock web site, at https://woodstock.dev.java.net/source/browse/*checkout*/woodstock/doc/release-notes.html. The build shipped with NetBeans IDE 6.1 is Woodstock 4.2 Build 3.
Description: Blue Prints Ajax Sample components are not supported in this release because they are based on a old version of Dojo that is no longer compatible with later versions. Woodstock components bundled in NetBeans depends on more recent versions of Dojo APIs for client side rendering. For most of the widely used BP Ajax components (supported in NetBeans 5.5), there is equivalent functionality available from Project woodstock as listed below.
- Auto Complete - This blog (http://blogs.sun.com/dmitry/entry/creating_autocomplete_entry_field_with ) describes how to achieve similar functionality with components from Project Woodstock library.
- Pop up Calendar - Project Woodstock includes a Calendar component.
- Select Value field - Use auto complete instead which has similar functionality but different UI.
- Progress Bar - Project Woodstock includes a Progress Bar component.
- Google Map - Planned for future.
- Rating Component - Planned for future.
- RichText Editor - Not supported.
Description: Projects with custom themes migrated to NetBeans IDE 6.1 will produce Missing Body Element errors.
Workaround: Manually switch to the default theme before migrating. Custom themes will not work and will need to be rebuilt.
Description: In NetBeans IDE 6.1, the Add Menu item is disabled in the Navigator window and there is no functionality for editing the properties through source packages.
Workaround:
- Double click SessionBean1 (or other java file) to open the bean in the Java editor.
- Manually add the property, such as private String CustomerId;.
- Right click on the property and choose Generate Code.
- From the Generate popup menu, select Getters and Setters.
In the Generate Getters And Setters dialog for SessionBean1, select your property and press OK.
Public Getter and Setter methods are inserted after your property.
Description: Due to a change in Woodstock components, resize handles have been removed from the following Woodstock components: TextField, Text Area,Password Field, Drop Down and List Box. This issue impacts especially projects imported from Java Studio Creator and NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5/5.5.1. Resized components may look different from how they looked in previous releases.
Workaround: For TextField and Text Area components, use the columns and rows attributes, respectively. Drop Down and List Box have been enhanced to include a new width property.
Description: When a button is placed using absolute positioning, its width is incorrect. For example, when NetBeans IDE 6.1 uses absolute positioning to place components in Grid Layout Mode, this problem may occur.
IE7 expects a value to be specified for the width of buttons. If a width attribute is not specified, the width is set to width:auto, which results in the button's width being set to the entire available width of the button's container element. For example, if the button style has left=130px then the button will start at 130px left and will expand to the width of the <body> element.
Workaround: There are several different ways to solve this issue in NetBeans:
- Specify the width property for the button, or resize the button in the IDE to make the IDE assign a width to the button.
- In the IDE, drop the button into a Group Panel component to put the button inside a span tag. In this case there is no need to set the positioning as the IDE sets the positioning for the Group Panel component. For example, the JSP code of a Button inside a Group Panel component may look like this:
<webuijsf:panelGroup binding="#{Page1.groupPanel1}" id="groupPanel1" style="position: absolute; left: 240px; top: 168px">
<webuijsf:button binding="#{Page1.button1}" id="button1" text="Button"/> </webuijsf:panelGroup>
Description: faces-config.xml used to have the commented section listing how to indicate other locales, with some lines for certain locales as an example. Users must now add these line manually, making sure the name of the locales of interest are in the supported locales section.
Workaround: Manually add the desired locale to the locale section of the faces.config.xml file. Here is an example of how the code should appear:
<application>
<locale-config>
<default-locale>en</default-locale>
<supported-locale>desired locale</supported-locale>
</locale-config>
</application>See also Issue #103085
Description: When working with two Visual Web JSF projects, and when closing the second project and returning to the first, may yield an Null Pointer Exception for the first drag and drop.
Workaround: Press refresh in designer and continue working. If this does not help, it is necessary to restart the IDE.
NetBeans 6.1 Web Services enables you to develop SOAP and RESTful services and clients. JAX-WS (Metro), REST (Jersey), Axis2, and JAX-RPC architectures are supported.
The unresolved Web Services issues for this release are as follows:
Description: There are compilation issues with /src/org.netbeans.saas.facebook.FacebookService.java and /src/org.netbeans.saas.facebook.FacebookService.java. In addition, the Callback servlet class is missing, and so is its registration in web.xml.
NetBeans 6.1 Mobility enables you to develop Java ME based applications for MIDP, CLDC and CDC devices.
The unresolved Mobility issues for this release are as follows:
Description: NetBeans 6.1 Mobility and Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2 bundled with this release only support Windows and Linux platforms.
Workaround: Mac OS users can download the MPowerplayer to develop mobile applications. The FAQ has instructions for installing Mpowerplayer in the IDE.
Description: The Sun Java Toolkit 1.0 for CDC is not bundled with the 6.1 release.
Workaround: Download the Sun Java Toolkit 1.0 for CDC from the Sun Developer Network. The NetBeans CDC Emulator Platform Setup Guide has instructions for installing this and other SDKs for CDC development.
Description: Mobile applications can not be connected to an enterprise using the Mobility distribution of NetBeans 6.1.
Workaround: Install the Mobility End to End plugin.
- In the IDE's main menu go to Tools > Plugins.
- In the Plugins dialog click the Available Plugins tab.
- In the Name column of the Available Plugins, find Mobility End to End.
- Check the box next to Mobility End to End and click Install.
- The NetBeans IDE Installer dialog shows the plugins about to be installed. If additional plugins are necessary, the IDE selects them automatically. Click Next.
- A license agreement may appear next. To enable End to End functionality, accept the license agreement and click Install.
Note: You can also enable End to End functionality by installing the full distribution of NetBeans 6.1.
Description: The Sun Java Wireless Toolkit does not support non-ASCII characters in project paths.
Workaround: Make sure that your user directory does not contain non-ASCII characters. If it does, change the IDE's default user directory.
Description: Mobile application projects created in NetBeans can not be run in Japanese and Chinese Linux locales with JDK 6 installed.
Workaround: Use JDK 5.0 or run projects from English locale.
NetBeans 6.1 UML lets you explore and evaluate the UML functionality in the IDE. We encourage you to get involved and give us feedback by logging any issues you encounter in the Issue Tracking system at http://www.netbeans.org/community/issues.html.
Note: NetBeans 6.1 UML is currently not supported on the Macintosh OS X platform. UML is available for the Macintosh OS X platform via the NetBeans Plugin Manager. Please see the NetBeans wiki for UML Mac issues, http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/UMLMacIssues to get more information about the known Macintosh OS X issues and workarounds.
This NetBeans SOA 6.1 release lets you explore and evaluate new functionality in the IDE. We encourage you to get involved and give us feedback by logging any issues you encounter in the Issue Tracking system at http://www.netbeans.org/community/issues.html.
The unresolved SOA issues for this release are as follows:
Description: CASA does not support user editing of its generated files, and provides no warning when a user does so.
Workaround: Do not edit CASA-generated WSDL files. Manual editing of WSDL file is not supported and will cause unexpected results.
Description: If you cancel the PartnerLink dialog that appears when you drag a WSDL file or a Web Service node from a NetBeans project onto a diagram, the IDE does not roll back the retrieval of the WSDL files(s).
Workaround: If these files are not needed by the project, simply delete them manually from the Projects window, as you would delete any other project resource.
Workaround: Use JDK 1.6.0_02 or later.
Description: In this release, the XSLT Designer does not support messages declared in WSDL using the type="..." attribute. Only the declarations with the element="..." attribute are supported.
euc-jp) .
Description: Sometimes, on completion of using File > New WSDL from database wizard, there is an exception and an incorrect wsdl file with an empty source view is created. This happens when running if
Solaris ja(euc-jp) locale; It might happen in a similar locale on Linux or MacOS and might even happen using other Unix non-utf8 locales on Solaris. It does not happen on Windows. It also does not happen when running insolaris ja utf-8or otherutf-8locales.Workaround: Running NetBeans in
utf-8 jaor otherutf-8locales can partially solve the problem, but the means user will need to change existing files that were created or imported ineuc-jpencoding to useutf-8encoding. Otherwise, the user might not be able to see properly some characters. For example, the issue does not happen if user is running NetBeans while in theSolaris ja_JP.UTF-8locale.
Description: After performing format of a large xml schema file, the next action in the IDE will cause it to hang for a long time. It can take more than 10 minutes for the IDE to come back to the normal state.
Workaround: Usually you just have to wait.
Description: The deployment process tends to fail when a user tries to re-deploy an application without having previously started the application server.
Workaround: Start the application server, undeploy and deploy the application.
NetBeans 6.1 C/C++ support C and C++ applications on Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OS X, Linux, and the SolarisTM Operating System. C/C++ developers can bring existing applications into the NetBeans project system, or develop new applications and libraries. NetBeans C/C++ support covers the end-to-end development cycle: projects and templates, an advanced language-aware editor, makefile-based builds, and debugging.
For information on installing and configuring the compilers and tools for NetBeans C/C++ support, see Installing and Configuring C/C++ Support.
The unresolved C/C++ issues for this release are as follows:
Description: When you import settings from a NetBeans IDE 6.0-based user directory to a NetBeans IDE 6.1-based user directory, you might encounter problems such as not being able to edit source files. To avoid such problems, do not import settings when you start using NetBeans IDE 6.1 so that you start with a new user directory.
Description: When you open a project created with a later version of the NetBeans IDE, you might get a null pointer exception. If this situation occurs, exit and restart the IDE, and then open the project.
Description: When you try to cancel a running project by right-clicking the progress bar in the lower right corner of the NetBeans IDE and choosing Cancel process, the progress bar disappears but the process continues running.
Description: On the Solaris and Linux operating systems, code compiled with the Sun Studio compilers cannot always be correctly debugged with the gdb debugger. Most known problems are fixed in the Sun Studio 12 software but several more exist. If you run into problems debugging programs compiled with Sun Studio 12 compilers, the first thing you should do is apply the latest Sun Studio 12 product patches. If your problem still exists, please file a defect in Issuezilla and make this task depend on it.
As problems are found, we will open new issues and update this task to depend on them, giving some idea of the current state of debugging programs compiled with Sun Studio 12 compilers using NetBeans and the gdb debugger.
These problems do not affect debugging code compiled with Sun Studio 12 compilers using the Sun Studio 12 IDE and the dbx debugger.
Description: When debugging on the Macintosh with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), the default version of the gcc and g++ compilers generates code with a bug in the debug output. Apple has released an updated Xcode package (version 2.5) with a fix for this problem. The correct versions of gcc, g++, and gdb are:
gcc: 4.0.1 - Apple build 5367
g++: 4.0.1 - Apple build 5367
gdb: 6.3.50 - Apple build 573 (10/20/2006)
To download this version of Xcode, see http://developer.apple.com/tools/download.
This problem is not an issue on Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).
The symptoms of the problem are that executables compiled with the -gdwarf flag (the default for C/C++ application projects) have incorrect line information and breakpoints may be ignored.
You can find news, articles, additional modules, and other useful information on the NetBeans project web site. Since NetBeans is an open-source project, the web site also provides access to source code, a bug database, information on creating your own NetBeans modules, and much more. For more information, visit http://www.netbeans.org.
To get the most out of the new functionality in NetBeans IDE 6.1, check out the continuing series of web-based tutorials and flash videos. Keep checking these pages, as we are adding new content all the time.
The built-in help system for NetBeans IDE 6.1 has been updated to reflect the changes in the user interface since release 5.5.
Note: If you are running the NetBeans IDE on Mac OS X, see Using NetBeans on Mac OS X for more information about keyboard equivalents, tips and tricks, and other Mac-specific topics.
You can also keep up to date on NetBeans IDE and interact with the NetBeans community by signing up for NetBeans project mailing lists at http://www.netbeans.org/community/lists/.