Re: Install and running older and newer version of NB in parallel

On 2026-02-28 10:23, Michael Bien wrote:
> On 2/28/26 01:14, Joakim Schramm wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> as I'm new to the Java and NB world, time traveling from the distant VB6 world.  I have a simple question. Would it be possible to install and run NB-7.0.1 (+ JDK1.6) and NB-29 (JDK25) simultaneously?
> yes you can. Each version will create its own config and cache folder and can run in parallel. I have most version on disk for regression testing.
> 
> (you can also run multiple instances of the same version in parallel if you give them separate userdirs --userdir)
> 

Thanks, that's good news. I will try that.
>>
>> So why would I like to such a stupid thing? Well, I have a batch of VB6 applications I would like to convert over to Java and now it happens so that I found and old and since 10 years abandoned Java Swing (I think) project on GitHub (originally from Google Code) that was trying to achieve just that.
>>
>> Far from perfect but still does a lot of heavy lifting when running the JAR file, but only loads in NB-7.0.1 but the current code loads with errors. Right now I run that NB-7 project in a VM but it's kinda clunky and slow.
>>
>> So, is this doable, to install NB-7 and JDK-1.6 on my my main box alongside current NB-29 - without messing up things of course?
> 
> since you mention JDK 1.6. If you are lucky, you could bump the javac target of the project from 1.6 to 8 and it might work even with latest NetBeans. You can register a new JDK (e.g JDK 8) in the platform manager (tools menu) for this project.
> 
> The reason why this isn't working out of the box is most likely because javac itself is periodically bumping the minimal supported target:
> 
> javac 8 supports 1.2+
> javac 9 supports 6+
> javac 14 supports 7+
> javac 20 supports 8+
> 

If I could update the old project to work in latest NB-29 that would of 
course be great, as when I tried it NB-29 complained that support for 
Swing had been depreciated with NB-7.0 being the last version supporting it.

> Apache NetBeans is made to interface with the latest compiler (currently 26), so it's minimal target is 8 (which makes sense since 8 is the oldest LTS release atm).
> 
>>
>> My goal is, if possible to recreate the project in either a NB Platform (which I think is closer to Swing) or JavaFX.
> 
> yeah the NB Platform is using swing, but some projects managed to use JavaFX with it too. The Swing/JavaFX interoperability has some edge cases though which might not be something for the first project after VB - and might not be what you want in the fist place if swing is sufficient for the task.
> 
> -mbien
> 

Yes, when creating a Platform project the Designer looks pretty much the 
same as the Swing one in NB-7.0.1 but even there I can only open the 
main form in RO-mode as it complains about some generated parts missing 
and honestly I don't really know what type and NB version the project 
originally as created in (This is the project btw: 
https://github.com/javiercrowsoft/vb6-to-java).

Keeping it as the original (Swing) project, or as a NB Platform project 
would be sufficient to me as a learning experience and starting point as 
creating Java from VB6 is the main purpose. I simply look to see if I 
can take it further than what it produces right now.

I did start a JavaFx project to replicate it but realize that it would 
probably be more work that necessary. Anyway, I will try to get NB7 and 
JDK1.6 working and take it from there.

/Joakim


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