Netbeans 7.3 annoyances

1
votes

I recently switched from Eclipse to Netbeans 7.3 and experiencing a lot of quirks and i'm wondering if anyone else experienced them and/or got a solution. Because of these 'problems' i'm considering switching back to Eclipse again but i'm in doubt because NB has a lot of good things too !

These are the quirks:

  • when creating a new Java class, and make some typo's e.g. somewhere in a method, NB does not recognize / display the errors directly, but after a very long wait or a restart of NB. This also happens to existing classes.
  • background scanning tasks is sometimes stuck at 100%
  • code completion does take forever. Don't even think about refactoring or renaming a class because it takes >3 minutes to scan the classpath (why, it's a new class for crying out load)
  • hot-deployment: changes are not always synchronized correctly with the (Glassfish) server. Sometimes a complete undeploy and deploy is needed to reflect the changes made in the source.
  • NB manipules my pom.xml and glassfish-web.xml: it adds a deploy hint to the pom.xml and also changes or removes the context-root in the glassfish-web.xml. Please stop doing this!
  • Why o why can't i do a 'Fix imports' on my entire project. You can do a 'organize import' on the entire project, but this won't add the missing imports. See http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=167031#c2

Running NB 7.3 on Windows XP, 3GB RAM, 2+GHz cpu The project is a Java 7 maven project containing 12 modules / sub projects

3
netbeansnetbeans-7.3
"hot-deployment: changes are not always synchronized correctly with the (Glassfish) server. Sometimes a complete undeploy and deploy is needed to reflect the changes made in the source." - This is one of reason I changed FROM eclipse TO netbeans. It never worked correctly for me in eclipse and works very nicely in netbeans for me. Exactly the opposite of what happens to you. - Victor Stafusa
Also in the projects window, the icon 'needs to be compiled' shows against a file, even after I Clean and build, Compile the individual file etc. - likejudo
You can disable/reduce the scanning problem: wiki.netbeans.org/ScanOnDemand - Joachim Rohde
Give IDEA a try jetbrains.com/idea/features/index.html - opticyclic
IntelliJ IDEA looks better than other Java IDEs, except that if you have freedom to choose your IDE whether you are part of a big/small teams, then stick to you favorite IDE there is no need to shift from one to other. As a Java developer you can try the other IDE to do some experiments or for any reason it strikes your mind. Google Android ADT is slowly moving towards IntelliJ IDEA based IDE for faster and better GUI and app development. - Sree Rama

3 Answers

1
votes

I strongly recommend that you DO NOT attempt to install the ScanOnDemand plugin. It completely trashed my Netbeans, forcing me to use the Task Manager to kill the process. No existing projects were found; they were all listed as "unrecognized project; missing plug-in?". I had to re-install Netbeans.

0
votes

One thing to look for is max heap allowed. Try adding "-J-Xmx2000M" to the Netbeans startup.

ref: Setting Heap Size

0
votes

I suggest stick to your favourite IDE. Eclipse is still popular and Juno packages are doing good and Kepler is already available. You can try around latest packages.

IntelliJ IDEA looks better than other Java IDEs (light weight, faster, nice integration with SCM(source configuration) tools, possibility of easy cloud deployment, except that if you have freedom to choose your IDE whether you are part of a big/small teams, Otherwise there is no need to shift from one to other. IntelliJ is the first IDE to give nice in-built support to Play framework

Google Android ADT is completely moving towards AndroidStudio based on community version of IntelliJ IDEA for faster and better GUI and app development.

As a Java developer it is not bad to try the other IDE to do some experiments or for any reason it strikes your mind.

Eg: Netbeans comes with sample apps in Java EE,Java7/Java2EE which looks better, nice examples for websockets, Servlet3.0, NIO examples etc,...but just try it or just ignore if it does not work. It is very easy to generate Entities from Database Tables, creating REST Endpoints in NetBeansIt may come with lot of in-built plugin-support for various java frameworks like RESTful webservice frameworks, JSF2.x, Primefaces3.x, SpringMVC, Struts but you may not sure to use the same version of framework. Some plugins may not work sufficient according to your business needs. Even if you okay with existing version it is not very friendly to develop Rich real-time UI development because Netbeans with Primefaces, instead you need to manually create XHTML templates. Netbeans comes with nice support for Glassfish and tomcat, (other servers I am not sure but support is in-built). You can remote deployment with ease. Netbeans learning tutorials on JavaEE nice for beginners in the subject.

Netbeans also available as zipped bundle, hence no need to install even on Windows machines.

Eclipse has got better support with Java RoboCode learning tool (initiated by developed by IBM long ago.).

Also Netbeans comes with nice support for HTML5, Groovy, PHP, C++ as well (according to posts by users community, because I did not use them).