Sunday August 17, 2008

Sources and Project for the NetBeans AspectJ Module

are to be found here:

sourceforge.net/projects/aspectj-for-nb6/

Find out how to get access to the source code here.

The netbeans module project is set up to use JDK 1.5 and the NB 6.0 harness.

If you want to contribute to the project you are welcomed to do so by joining, sending patches, etc.

Thank you

Thursday April 03, 2008

NetBeans on Swing under Linux

You still can find people complaining about the look of swing and of netbeans under linux. At this time the current JDK is 1.6, the current NetBeans version is 6.0. Now it is not the time to be complaining about bad looking Swing GUIs under Linux anymore. GTK-Apps can look good and Swing apps can look like GTK apps with the current JDK (due to native rendering). Only font rendering happens somewhat different.

If you use gnome as desktop netbeans 6 under java 6 will run with the gtk look and feel by default. If you use KDE you use the start switch --laf com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel. I use the KDE-Desktop on my notebook and thats what I do and here is what it looks like depending on the GTK-Theme I select for GTK-Apps (with gnome-theme-manager):

Candido GPerfect

IMetal-Grey

Aurora Platinum

Kaya Aurora

Murrine bluRaz

Not-XP

Murrina-Tangoesque

Murrina-Verdeolivo

Truth+

Nimbus

You can get themes from gnome-look.org

Thursday March 06, 2008

Improved Spring Framework Support in NetBeans 6.1: XML-Config Files

NetBeans 6.1, released today as a Beta, brings you better support for working with the Spring Framework. Among other things it makes it now more comfortable to work with xml configuration files.

Here are some pictures showing the offered functionality:

XML Grammar

As expected completion for xml elements and attributes is offered:

Classes in classpath

Also completion for class names of classes in the project classpath is available:

Bean properties

Here you see the completion for spring bean property names, also using the p-namespace:

Bean References

An example for completion for spring bean references:

This Beta release also brings you:

• Bundled Spring Framework 2.5
• Wizards for XML configuration files (more on this in Geertjan blog) and Spring Web MVC
• Spring Web MVC framework support in web project

Update: Hyperlinking

A feature I forgot is hyperlinking. Say you have the following snippet:

If you press the control-key and hover over the class attribute value you have a link to the source code of the class. In the same way you can navigate to the corresponding setter-method for the property "anotherbean" and to the declaration of the bean with the id "beanTwo" within the configuration file by clicking on the appearing links on the value of the name and ref attributes of the property element.

Friday January 25, 2008

Late Enhancement to the NetBeans Aspectj Module

The module now offers you the possibility of starting a build via the context menu of project nodes in the explorer. I hope this alleviates usability problems concerning the plugin particularly when working with multiple aspectj enabled projects, as you don't have to set the project as main project first and then invoke the aspectj compiler from the toolbar or the main menu.

You can get the plug-in module from here

Wednesday January 16, 2008

IBM WebSphere 6 Support for NetBeans

Yet another announcement from the netbeans mailing list (by Petr Hejl). This time about coming support for the IBM WebSphere Application Server.
Read it here

New NetBeans Support Blog

I read today in the NetBeans mailing list this posting by Radhika about a NetBeans Support Blog: link

From the about page of the blog:

"Contributions to this blog are provided by the NetBeans support and sustaining staff. This blog serves as an additional resource where NetBeans users can find useful tips & tricks, issue workarounds, and product updates."

Check it out at blogs.sun.com/NetBeanssupport/

Monday December 31, 2007

NetBeans better than Eclipse for doing Consulting

is one of the impressions you get from this Adam Bien's posting where he is "thinking loud about Eclipse and Netbeans".

He makes his points comprehensible based on the out of the box NetBeans experience, improved once again in NetBeans 6.0.

Read the posting here

Sunday December 30, 2007

NetBeans plugins for River, Table and Form Layout Managers

I downloaded the code for the three layout manager modules developed by Illya Kysil and hosted at developer.berlios.de/projects/nblayoutpack/ and compiled them against NetBeans 6.0. I made them available at the plugin portal. You can download them by following the links given below.

TableLayout
FormLayout
RiverLayout

The modules are distributed under the Sun Public License.

I know myself neither the layouts nor the modules, but it seems you (have to) customize a layout mainly by selecting the layout node in the inspector window and setting values in the property sheet of the layout.

Thursday December 13, 2007

NetBeans 6 and the Synthetica Look and Feel: Plugin

I wrote yesterday about my experiments applying the Gtk UI delegates for NetBeans custom tabbed containers. Now I have distilled a plug in module for specific support of the Synthetica Look And Feel. I uploaded it to the NetBeans Plugin Portal. You can get it from there.

The plugin doesn't contain the synthetica look and feel you have to downloaded separately. To use synthetica with NetBeans you start it something like this:

netbeans --laf de.javasoft.plaf.synthetica.SyntheticaStandardLookAndFeel -cp:p C:\synthetica.jar

assuming that you use the Synthetica Standard Look And Feel and synthetica.jar is located on C: on a windows machine. Adjust accordingly to your case.

The following picture shows NetBeans running (on Linux) with the Synthetica BlueIce Look and Feel set.

Enjoy it!

Tuesday December 11, 2007

NetBeans 6 and the Synthetica Look and Feel

Latest versions of NetBeans and Synthetica Look and Feel do work together due to improved NetBeans support for NetBeans 6 in Synthetica as Wolfgang Zitzelsberger reported in this Eclipse Zone (!) article.

Because NetBeans uses custom swing UI components and there is no special support for Synthetica, you get the familiar dark tabs for the "unknown" look and feels. But as Synthetica is Synth based and the Gtk LaF is also and the netbeans team has achieved great improvements in the fidelity of those tabs when using the Gtk LaF, why don't try to apply the custom NetBeans Gtk UI delegates to Synthetica?

The result of that experiment looks like this:

I think that's an improvement compared to the dark tabs, which I don't want to show you. The UI delegates had to be modified a little bit to prevent Synthetica from running into a IndexOutOfBoundsException while painting the tabs. This introduces also a bit overhead.

Don't know if the main tool bar could be also adapted without too much work in order to look more like the editor tool bar.

Saturday December 01, 2007

NB AspectJ Module updated - Compile on Save and other features

The NetBeans AspectJ plugin has been updated. The update contains the following features/improvements:

Compile on save
You can activate under options | miscellaneous | AJDE the option "compile on save". When you save a file that is part of the build (last active config) a (incremental) compile is triggered.

Better support for incremental builds
By using the switch "-incremental" in your lst build file you can tell the aspectj compiler to do incremental builds. I discovered and activated the secret API that attempts to repair the structure model that is used to show you gutter annotations, cross-refs and so on. So now those features remain usable while using incremental builds. The views and gutter annotations get updated after incremental builds.

Progress feedback integrated with the netbeans progress API
Now the default AJDE progress dialog isn't shown anymore when building. The NetBeans progress bar is used instead.

Relationship table uses swinglabs JXTable
You don't need JDK 1.6 for the correct functioning of the Relationship table anymore because swinglabs JXTable is used to offer the sorting functionality.

UI recognizes dynamic advices
Dynamic advices are recognized and presented with the corresponding icon in the UI. (Except in the Relationship table, pending)

All cross-refs tree rows unfolded
The tree in the cross-refs tab shows always all tree nodes unfolded.

Shortcut for build last active configuration action
I have added a customizable shortcut for calling the action "build last active configuration". The shortcut is ALT+F11.

You can get the module from the plugin portal

Have fun!

Thursday November 22, 2007

A NetBeans SVG Icon (2)

As I wrote before I didn't create the svg icon. I am only adapting the colors to new netbeans releases. The icon with the 6.0 colors applied looks like this:

Download it here

Sunday November 18, 2007

AspectJ Relationship Table for NetBeans Plugin

One more visual feature: an AspectJ Relationship Table that shows you in overview all the crosscutting relationships of the classes included in the build.

Navigation to the source code elements is also possible by clicking on the corresponding cells in the "Source" and "Target" columns. The relationships are shown in the active direction (-> "advises"). Filter customizing will come later.

You can download the plugin from the plugin portal

Find out how to install and use it here.

Wednesday November 14, 2007

The aspect oriented brother of the Java navigator panel

The AspectJ plugin for NetBeans has been progressing in the last days with respect to graphical interface. From looking like just embedding AJBrowser in NetBeans, offering the same available and not available functionality, to now looking like the aspect oriented brother of the Java navigator panel.

In the picture below you see both siblings representing the structure of the same Java file. The file contains an AspectJ aspect given in AspectJ annotation based style. Therefore the file can be interpreted normally (as a class) by the Java navigator, while the AspectJ CrossRefs view shows the structure of the aspect.

Like the navigator, the cross-refs view offers you filtering functionality.

You can get the plugin from the plugin portal. How to install and use it is described here.

Have fun!

Tuesday November 06, 2007

Using the AspectJ Plug-In Module for NetBeans 6.0+ Last updated:  2007-12-17 11:36:09.0

I have uploaded today the module I was working on to the plugin portal. Here are some instructions:

This is the AspectJ plug-in module based on AJDE for NetBeans 6.0 and higher. It is based on AspectJ 1.5.3.

Installation

Download the zip file from the netbeans plugin portal and install all the nbm files contained in it with the plugin manager (Tools | Plugins). Due to dependencies please install in two steps: Install all nbms except relationshiptable.nbm. Then install relationshiptable.nbm.

Use

After restarting NetBeans create a java project and set it as the main project. 

You need to add the AspectJ runtime library installed by the one of the modules to the project's compile classpath. Go to your Project Properties | Libraries . At the Compile tab select Add Library ...   and select the library named "AspectJ-Runtime".

You may also want to add the following exclude patterns under Project Properties | Build | Packaging:
**/*.aj,**/*.lst,**/*.ajsym

Example

Our project is named "TestAJ". It is a java application project.

In the file named Main.java we write a method sayHello and we call it in the main method with new Main().sayHello();

package testaj;

/**
 *
 * @author ramos
 */
public class Main {

    /**
     * @param args the command line arguments
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
       new Main().sayHello();
    }
    public void sayHello(){
        System.out.println("\nHello");
    }

} 

Then we create an aspectj file called "Test.aj" (select New -> Empty AspectJ File (or New -> File/Folder...AspectJ -> Empty AspectJ File)) with the following contents:

package testaj;

public aspect Test{
    
    after(): execution(* sayHello(..)){
        System.out.println("again\n");
    }
    
}

Alternatively use the annotation based aspectj coding style and write in a file named Test.java:

package testaj;

import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.After;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;

@Aspect
public class Test {
    @After("execution (* sayHello())")
    public void sayAgain(){
        System.out.println("again\n");
    }
}

Then, we select the "Source Packages" node of the project and from the context menu, select New -> Source Roots Lst File (or New -> File/Folder... AspectJ -> Source Roots Lst File). The file appears then as in the default package.

If you name it "all.lst" your project will look like this:

In the aspectj toolbar we activate the AJ button.
Then we select the our build configuration file (the all.lst file) clicking on the third button on the aspectj toolbar:

AspectJ compiles the project and if there were no errors then the IDE build action is called which completes building the project. (If there were errors they are reported by AJDE in a messages window)

After successfully building the project you can see the structure in the aspectj tab. The editor gutter shows also aspectj annotations, which you can also use to navigate the crosscuting structure by right-clicking them.

When you run the project (F6), you will see the output shown in the picture:

Remember that after you make changes to your code you have to rebuild it with aspectj first and then you can run or debug it. The trick is that NetBeans has to see that the compiled classes (built with aspectj) are up to date, in order to avoid it starting a normal java build.

Issues

- Right-clicking on an annotation glyph without having focused explicitly the corresponding text component can make the menu corresponding to an annotation of the last focused text component appear. Make sure the right text component has the focus by clicking on it. Maybe I should show no menu in those cases rather than showing the wrong one.

TODO

- Fix bugs
- Integrate more tightly with the build process of the project maybe by offering a project extension that overrides the compile ant task with a custom one that calls the compile functionality in the module.
- Offer more features like statistics, visualization, comparisons etc like in the eclipse plugin
- Offer a build configuration editor in order to exclude files etc
- Offer options
- Offer special aspectj templates
- Wizards ...
- And more.