Netbeans 6.0 Released with Support for Ruby, Mobility Enhancements, and Integrated Profiler

Posted by Scott Delap on Dec 03, 2007 04:09 PM

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Today the Netbeans team released Netbeans 6.0. Earlier in the year 6.0 was dual licensed under GPL and CDDL. Version 6 comes a little more than a year after 5.5 and includes a number of significant enhancements including:

Editor Improvements

• Smarter code completion
• Highlights
• Better Navigation and Inspection
• Live Templates and Surround Functionality

Ruby/JRuby/Ruby on Rails Support

• Project support including Gems and RSpec
• Advanced Ruby Editing
• ActiveRecord Code Completion
• Ruby Debugger
• Ruby on Rails Support

Profiling

• Profiler integrated into NetBeans IDE
• Compare Memory Snapshots
• Heap Walker
• JMeter Integration
• Dynamic Attach on JDK 1.6

Web and Java EE

• Built-in visual design for web applications
• Visual page flow editing
• Enhanced JavaScript support
• Enhanced web services support
• Support for Ajax-enabled JavaServer Faces components

Mobility

• New Integrated UI for CLDC/MIDP and CDC development
• New game builder
• New Visual Mobile Designer
• Re-written JSR-172 stub compiler

SOA

• Artifacts for service composition and assembly
• Graphical WSDL editor
• XSLT editor to edit transformations
• Tooling support for binding components
• Java EE Web Service project support

The PDF based Netbeans Magazine has also released a 62 page issue dedicated to Netbeans 6.0.  InfoQ is publishing an ongoing series detailing the new Netbeans Ruby support.

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   A wonderful IDE indeed but why Ruby?

   Dec 4, 2007 4:35 AM by Zeev B

   I guess that Sun decided to invest in Ruby because of the big RoR hype in the past couple of years. I think that there is a more suitable dynamic language that has a JVM implementation and a very dedicated community. It is used a lot throughout the industry for example, Google uses it a lot (and it is even used inside Sun).This language arrives with a lot of useful built-in libraries and there are a lot of other open source libraries and frameworks to choose from. It is used to build big web sites such as YouTube and it is also used a lot by system adminitrators that want an easy and productive way to create scripts. You probably guessed by now that I am talking about the Python programming language. Although very different from Java I find Python is in tune with the Java culture : 1. Readability and explicitness - both Java and Python endorse clean readable code that explicitly states what is being done. 2. Matureness- Python and Java are of almost the same age. They are mature languages that proved themselves again and again in production systems. 3. Vibrant community - both platforms have a devoted community and community process. 4. Open source libraries - both platforms have a lot of libraries and frameworks available (a result of points 2 and 3). As a Java developer using a lot of Python/Jython nowadays, I am disappointed that Sun chose not to invest in supporting this popular and productive programming language. I think that NetBeans is loosing an opportunity to hook up with this wonderful community which is missing a high quality IDE such as NetBeans. I have discussed this issue with some Sun developers and I know that also at Sun there are Python/Jython developers that would like to see it supported on the NetBeans platform.

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   Re: A wonderful IDE indeed but why Ruby?

   Dec 4, 2007 1:54 PM by Alex Popescu

   I have asked myself the same question, and the only answer I have been able to figure out is that Ruby got all this support due to the buzz around RoR. As others may already know, Python world has great offerings in the same field, but unfortunately they haven't got the right people to create the noise. That's really unfortunate. ./alex -- .w( the_mindstorm )p. Alexandru Popescu Senior Software Eng. InfoQ Techlead/Co-founder

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   Using it every day to write RoR code

   Dec 4, 2007 9:54 PM by Thomas Meeks

   And it works wonderfully! Thus far, I am quite happy with what Netbeans provides. Definitely an IDE to check out if you are using rails.

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   Re: A wonderful IDE indeed but why Ruby?

   Dec 6, 2007 5:28 AM by Zeev B

   Alex, Part of the hype is also generated by sites like InfoQ (which BTW I enjoy and learn a lot from), therefore I think you can influence this by covering more Python related stories and topics such as the upcoming Python 3000, the new Jython releases, the wonderful Django web framework, the pypy research project and much more. I can see there is a Ruby community in the site (it appears on the left navigation bar under "Your Communities alongside Java, .NET, SOA etc.) - maybe it is time to also have a Python one. Ze'ev

   I have asked myself the same question, and the only answer I have been able to figure out is that Ruby got all this support due to the buzz around RoR. As others may already know, Python world has great offerings in the same field, but unfortunately they haven't got the right people to create the noise. That's really unfortunate. ./alex -- .w( the_mindstorm )p. Alexandru Popescu Senior Software Eng. InfoQ Techlead/Co-founder

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