Automated builds with Netbeans Platform 8.0.2

-
I've been converting UGS to run on the Netbeans Platform over the past week, and in general its been great.  The features and documentation I used while migrating UGS away from Swing were very well done. So aside from a couple hiccups, the Netbeans Platform has been great. Until a few days ago when I decided it was time to integrate my new changes with my Jenkins CI server.

It turns out that you can't build a Netbeans Platform application without connecting to the Netbeans IDE first. This has to do with the extra modules, platform components and build harness. Searching the subject online provides a lot of documentation, everything I've found is either out dated, contradictory, or I could only get it working with a new project and not my existing one.

The final solution was so simple, and minimally invasive that I wanted to create this blog post.

There are 4 interesting files for a Netbeans Platform build:
build.xml - Some documentation suggests adding a download-netbeans-rcp target here. That isn't needed. If you have a custom target you can put it here, otherwise there is no need to modify this file.
nbproject/build-impl.xml - This is loaded by build.xml, don't modify this file.
nbproject/project.properties - This file seems to identify your modules and the applications name, no need to modify this file either.
nbproject/platform.properties - Modify this file!
The Netbeans Platform has facilities built into its build script to download all required files. platform.properties is where you need to specify what it should download.
# These are used later in the build script
nbplatform.active.dir=${suite.dir}/latestStableBuild
suite.dir=${basedir}
harness.dir=${nbplatform.active.dir}/harness
# Provide some URLs
bootstrap.url=http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/nbms-and-javadoc/lastStableBuild/artifact/nbbuild/netbeans/harness/tasks.jar
autoupdate.catalog.url=http://dlc-cdn.sun.com/netbeans/updates/8.0.2/uc/final/distribution/catalog.xml.gz
Thats it! It probably took me 5+ hours to find that. Now I can run "ant build-zip" on my Jenkins server and get a zip archive in return.

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 7, 2016 at 3:12 PM

    good post

    ReplyDelete
  2. AdminDecember 18, 2017 at 10:34 AM

    Is it possible to incorporate a maven build of a netbeans platform application with jenkins?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Will WinderDecember 18, 2017 at 3:55 PM

    Yes you can build a netbeans platform application from the command line with Maven as well. I believe "mvn package" will create a universal zip file that you could deploy. The installers can be built with "mvn package -P deployment"

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OpenSCAD linear extrude that interpolates between two shapes

-
Image
Full source code is available for this thing on thingiverse . OpenSCAD has proven to be an easy to use and flexible tool, but at times I'm left scratching my head to figure out ways around its limitations. In this case I had two squares with rounded corners, their sizes and the corner radius for both squares are configurable. Now I wanted a square tube to join these two pieces together. My hope was that I could get it close enough with some fancy parameters piped into the OpenSCAD linear_extrude function. It seemed possible since there are some pretty fancy parameters regarding rotations and twists. After checking out the documentation it didn't look like there was anything that would be close. For this project I found a module by Felipe C. da S. Sanches to create squares with rounded corners . I'm sure there are many like it, but this was the first one I found and it worked as advertised. So made a little module using this which wraps around a rectangle for ...
Read more

Taking Stuff Apart: Realistic Modulette-8

-
Image
When I saw this fine piece of electronics at the landfill I knew it was special. Not only did it have a plethora of nice looking knobs and various shiny areas, but it also had a wooden enclosure. Although stamped steel cases are nice, its a little impersonal, not like this finely crafted device. I had already thrown it in the trunk before I even noticed - the thing was an 8-track player. Click below for more pictures.
Read more

XCode4: UITabBarController with UINavigationController using Interface Builder

-
Image
If this helped you, please consider downloading my FREE  iPhone app " Hydrate Yourself "and leaving a review. There are a  whole   bunch  of  tutorials  to create a Navigation Controller inside a TabBarController with XCode3.  But there are a number of small changes in XCode4 which can trip up someone not familiar with them.  So this guide is essentially an updated version of those other guides, designed to create the same simple demo using the new tool. 1. Create a new Project We are going to start with a Tab Bar Application, so go ahead and create a new project as usual. I'm calling mine Navigation Tab Bar. 2. Select the Tab Bar Click MainWindow.xib and you should see the integrated Interface Builder. On the left is a section called Objects, select the Tab Bar Controller. 3. Add the Navigation Controller On the right side of your screen click the Utilities box. This is new in XCode4 and should look familiar if you've been...
Read more