Re: Teaching with NetBeans

Ray Tayek wrote:

> At 11:57 AM 6/17/03 +0200, you wrote:
>
>> Ray Tayek wrote:
>>
>>> At 11:41 AM 6/12/03 -0400, you wrote:
>>>
>>>> ...
>>>> NetBeans gives me the opportunity to maybe offer the students 
>>>> something they can move too when they have "graduated" out of BlueJ 
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> consider starting with net beans instead. ignore the project tab. ...
>>
>>
>> One option is to turn off the Projects module - that will get rid of the
>> projects tab entirely.
>
>
> good idea, i did not know that you could do that. 

It used to be that if it was a unix system, you could
simply run NetBeans as root and whatever you did,
you'd end up doing globally - if you turned off modules,
they'd get turned off in the global settings layer.

I *think* this functionality was killed, since it was
entirely possible for someone to forget they were
root, run NetBeans, change some settings, and then
be perplexed that they had changed for other users.
There may still be some back-door for it, I'm
not sure.  It would be the friendliest way to configure
such functionality, but I'm not sure it was ever that
hot an idea.

>> - Preconfigure a shared version on a drive that's shared with
>> all the student workstations.  After installation, delete
>> projects.jar from the modules directory (you may want
>> to turn off other modules to simplify the experience for
>> your students)
>
>
> this is good to know. in my case, i am stuck with whatever they have 
> done in the labs. unless the config files are in a place where i can 
> change them. the oroginal poster may find this useful.
>
>> - Do a custom build with only the modules you want and
>> have your students download that from some shared location
>
>
> downloading would be ok, but in my case on windoze, the students can 
> not write to the c drive. but installing a custom build sounds like a 
> good idea. 

If you feel like taking the initiative to do it, it's not too hard.
Probably start with the NetBeans 3.5 sources -

mkdir nb_all
cd nb_all
export CVSROOT=:pserver:[email protected]:/cvs
cvs co -r release35

Build the minimal configuration to start:
cd nbbuild
ant -Dmoduleconfig=slim

Run it and see if there are things you still want to
remove.  If so:

Have a look at the file $NB_SRC/nbbuild/build.properties -
toward the bottom you'll see entries like :

config.fixedmodules.slim=${config.fixedmodules.superslim}
config.modules.slim=${config.modules.superslim}, \
        autoupdate, \
        beans, \
        debuggercore, \
        debuggerjpda, \
        form, \
        httpserver, \
        httpserver/servletapi, \
        javadoc, \
        properties

These are lists of the modules to build.   The last . delimited
part of the name defines a "moduleconfig" you can pass
to the build script.  "fixedmodules" are ones you always want
to build for configuration.  "modules" are modules which should
be added to the build, with the build script resolving any
dependencies and building those modules the modules in
the "modules" list depend on (so if you want CVS support,
core version control support will be built and included
because CVS support requires it).

Settle on a config you like, and heck, it wouldn't be a problem
to add this into the standard build.properties as an "edu"
target.

> I've long thought we should do a NetBeans "education build"
>
>> preconfigured with fewer bells and whistles.  You can get
>> close to tha by doing a build with ant -Dmoduleconfig=slim,
>> but you still have, for example, projects.  If we could agree
>> on what needs to be in it, I'd be willing to make the build
>> for you (off the 3.5 release trunk or whatever) and send
>> it your way. ...
>> Does any of this sound interesting?
>
>
> yes and no. i knew that netbeans is infinitely configurable and has a 
> bazillion plug-in's, but mostly i just use i and discover features as 
> i ned them. mostly i just avoid the project tab, but since i have ant 
> and tests in there in case netbeans is not available, my filesystem 
> getting pretty ugly (:
>
> on the yes side, sounds great!
>
> on the no side, as you pointed out. someone will have to make and 
> maintain it 

Well, the nice part is that "it" in this case is probably 10 lines in a text
file :-)

> you have probably given me (and others) enough clues in *one* post to 
> get around many problems. i did find some good stuff in the ant book 
> on netbeans, when i looked there for an answer to the original post. i 
> suspect that a *small* document or addition to the manual that was 
> more about installation and configuration options would be work better. 

Ant book on NetBeans?  Not sure what that is.  I can, however,
make a shameless plug for NetBeans - The Definitive Guide from
O'Reilly :-).

Best regards,

Tim