The NetBeans Monthly Newsletter - September 2002

http://www.netbeans.org/
http://www.netbeans.org/ide/download.html

Check this out

Module Catalogue
Catalogue of free and commercial add-on modules available for your NetBeans IDE.

NetBeans 3.4
available for download.

OnJava NB Article
NetBeans article from OnJava

Sun ONE Studio Portal
NetBeans related resources

Hot threads

nbui

Property sheet toolbar - can it go away/
36

Lots of Editor Tabs (was [nbusers] Tabbed Panes Switch?)
27

nbdev

No, we don't have any performance problems in NetBeans
35

Options System Redesign
24

nbusers

Debugger - back step
29

Most Active Posters

Jesse Glick
228

Maxym Mykhalchuk
62

Jaroslav Tulach
57

Trung Duc Tran
56

Tim Boudreau
54

Statistics : August

IDE downloads

Total: 543473; +34875

Platform downloads

Total: 17757; +2745

Subscribers

2130; +40

Messages Posted

2230

Issue 4, September/27 2002

Sprout, Issue 4 (September 2002)

Welcome to the fourth issue of Sprout, the NetBeans monthly news.

The month of September is bringing about the commencement of autumn, breathing some colors into life as the time for working and achieving our goals is brought to the forefront. My name is Rob Demmer and I am a recent newcomer to the NetBeans team and looking forward to making some meaningful contributions to our community.

In Sprout this month you will find, Building an Application Using the NetBeans Platform by Frank Cohen, the latest information on the elections, our Developer Spotlight, featured project JProfiler and Cool Feature of the Month. One notable addition to the modules catalogue is RefactorIT version 1.2 OpenSource Community Edition. Be sure to check it out and enjoy this months edition.

Read through this issue; if you want to contribute interesting content for future issues or have any comments or ideas on how to make Sprout better give us a shout.

Rob Demmer

NetBeans Board Elections - Take 2!

Last month's announcement of the Board elections and outlined
voting timelines sparked some interesting discussions on the
nbdiscuss mailing list.

The role that the Board plays, and more generally the
higher-level decision making process employed on netbeans.org
is under discussion. Proposed alternatives would make the
governance and "control" structure more transparent and
accessible to the community as a whole.

It has been proposed that until the community draws up a
new "constitution" we continue to abide by the existing one -
that means proceeding with the election of a new 3-member
Board. See Ian Formanek's new proposed election timeline at
http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=382942&listName=nbdiscuss

Meanwhile, get involved in the broader discussion of how
decisions get made at netbeans.org! Some highlights of the
discussion so far :

http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=372470&listName=nbdiscuss

http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=372816&listName=nbdiscuss

http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=379349&listName=nbdiscuss

To get involved, subscribe to nbdiscuss
and post your thoughts.

Module Catalogue

New this month in the modules catalogue is the category Version Control which includes: ClearCase and StarTeam modules, both alpha versions. In addition under the Refactoring category you will find two new download versions of the RefactorIT 1.2 module: a 30-day evaluation and a free OpenSource Community Edition. The OpenSource Community Edition is for use on OpenSource projects approved by RefactorIT and NetBeans is an approved community!

If you are a NetBeans IDE user, check it out! Some of the modules can be downloaded via the Update Center, but many are only available from the catalogue, especially the commercial ones.

The catalogue is definitely not complete yet, so come back often to see the new stuff. If you have a module that is not yet listed, let us know.

[Module Catalogue ]

Developer Spotlight

In Developer Spotlight we take a look at the people out there contributing to the NetBeans effort. This month we are gaining further insight into the life of Maxym (Boris' Son) Mykhalchuk, a.k.a Mihmax, a.k.a. Gandalf.

Maxym can be found on hiking trips in the Crimea Mountains singing songs in the forest next to a crackling fire. With his tent on his back climbing mountains, he is surely thinking about the Russian Localization of NetBeans and the several API/Form changes that he is working on. Maxym found NetBeans while he was attending the university and writing a Java program. He has now been a user and contributor for over one year. Keep up the good work!

If you know of somebody we should profile then send us an email informing of us who and what contribution they have made. This is an opportunity for us to recognize each other and the hard work we are putting forth.

Rob Demmer

Featured Product - JProfiler from ej-technologies

About profiling

The most widely perceived applications of a profiler are finding performance bottlenecks and finding memory leaks. Beyond that, a profiler makes for an excellent quality assurance tool and is an ideal supplement to conventional debuggers. Integrating a profiler into the development process early on significantly enhances the quality of the final application and reduces the pitfalls that - in the absence of a profiler - are discovered only when it is far too late.

About JProfiler

JProfiler is a Java (TM) profiler that makes use of Java Virtual Machine Profiling Interface (JVMPI). The JVMPI allows a natively compiled library to be loaded in a running JVM and receive profiling events. JProfiler connects to this library via a socket and displays the available information interactively in a variety of views. This makes profiling simpler: after installing JProfiler into NetBeans, you can select your main class and select "Profile" in the context menu. Opened in a separate profiling workspace, the main window displays its views grouped into four sections:

- Memory Views: JProfiler features dynamically updated views displaying information about instantiated objects, arrays and allocation spots with or without garbage collected items. JProfiler's heap walker technology allows a real drill down along object reference graphs towards problem spots you might never find with tree-like representations of the heap. With it's unified system of views on the current object set and its hyperlinked navigation, it makes browsing the heap as easy as browsing the web.

- CPU Views: CPU views show invocation trees and hotspot backtraces resolved for threads or thread groups. With its convenient system of filter sets, the displayed data can be optimally tailored for the task at hand. JProfilers CPU views are fully dynamic and show the invocations of your application as it happens.

- Threads Views: Thread problems like deadlocks and race conditions are a nightmare for programmers, especially because it's often hard to tell where the problem is located. JProfiler's thread views include a thread monitor as well as a color-coded thread history. Monitor contention views enable you to trace back deadlocks as well as analyze the monitor contention history.

- VM Telemetry Views: Delivering all the relevant cumulated information about your virtual machine is the task of the VM telemetry views. JProfiler collects all data from the moment of your JVM's creation. Time resolved graphs of heap, objects, classes, garbage collector and threads serve as a bird's eyes view for spotting trends and trouble spots.

In addition, JProfiler features many statistical views, has the ability to save snapshots of the profiled application and includes a wide range of application server integration wizards. To download an evaluation copy of JProfiler please follow this link .

Free JProfiler Monitoring Edition

JProfiler Monitoring Edition is a lightweight, low overhead version of JProfiler. It focuses on cumulative statistics on the package and class level rather than problem solving detail. Best of all, it is free to use as a NetBeans module. It does not require a registration and is available at here .

[ej-technologies website ]

Featured Article

Building an Application using the NetBeans Platform

In this article, Frank Cohen describes how to create your own NetBeans modules and how to create your own branded application using the NetBeans Platform. The article covers module basics, building a module and creating a branded distribution. With this article it is now the time and opportunity to put those ideals in action. Read the article .

Frank Cohen is the principal architect for three Internet systems: Sun Community Server, Inclusion.net and TuneUp.com .

Robert Demmer

Cool Feature of the Month: Versioning Explorer in VCS Integration Support

One of the cool features in NetBeans 3.4 is a Versioning Explorer, accessible from any mounted VCS filesystem. The Versioning Explorer allows you to easily browse revisions and branches of version controlled files and to inspect their log information. There are also actions available on individual revisions.

If you have a VCS file system mounted from the Versioning Menu, you can invoke the Versioning Explorer from the pop-up menu on any file on that file system. The Versioning Explorer shows the complete content of the folders on a file-by-file basis; they are not grouped into DataObjects as in the standard Explorer. This gives you access to individual files for convenience when e.g. .java files need to be committed independently on .form files. Every file in the Versioning Explorer can be expanded to a tree of branches and revisions. Each revision has associated with it a set of properties and actions. You are able to view the content of every revision in the Editor, compare changes between selected revisions, etc. The current revision is differentiated by it's icon. The length of the message, that is printed next to each revision number can be customized in the properties of the root node of the filesystem.

Martin Entlicher