Re: Apache proposal for NetBeans

Hi Geertjan,

It's a good question. :)  I don't have anything particularly at the
moment, but the things that have been on my mind recently are:

1. Having a full JavaFX set of libraries to work with to have a
pure-JFX NB RCP application.  I have been refactoring a lot of code
lately and replacing parts of my application with JavaFX, and would
ultimately like to remove all Swing from my application.  My thought
was to evaluate where efx and mfx are in their codebases and fill in
the missing parts. The thought would be to reuse parts of ControlsFX
and perhaps contribute to there as well (e.g., the PropertySheet works
well for simple properties in ControlsFX, but I don't think it
supports things like events and methods).

2. Related to 1, I thought to investigate how much the Netbeans
Platform and IDE suites depend upon Swing-related modules and see
about making separations if necessary. I don't want to step on any
toes for what the primary NB developers are doing though.  I suppose
exploratory work is necessary to see where things are, what changes
might be necessary, would it be disruptive to anyone else, and whether
a separate set of modules might be better.

3. I do most of my Clojure development with Vim and commandline tools.
Having a full-featured Clojure plugin for Netbeans has been on my
mind. I know there's been various other projects that have been done
but I don't think they're very active or up to date.  I already have
some Clojure-related parts in my application (e.g., Editor API support
for the Clojure language, embedding of the Clojure interpreter) that
might be worth using.

4. Related to 3, I think it would be interesting to have script-based
extensions to Netbeans as an alternative to just module extensions.  I
was envisioning a script editor, and library tool. Users would write
scripts within Netbeans, choose where to register the script (e.g.,
editor action for a particular mime type, global menu entry, etc.),
and perhaps publish it if they want to share.  This may not be
necessary to have within NB itself though, and might be better as a
3rd party plugin.

Anyways, most of the above is speculative at best at this time, and I
need to think through it a bit more.  The JavaFX stuff is the most
personally valuable at this time and one which I will need to
investigate soon. If there's a list of areas where contributions are
desired (open bugs, testing, etc.) I'd be happy to review and see what
I can contribute.  I just went through the existing site and looked at
#nbdev on IRC, NetFIX and NetDEV, and Bugzilla, and the first three
seemed sort of dead and for Bugzilla I didn't know what to use to
search for open, unassigned bugs.  I don't know if there's a migration
plan for the information on the NB site, but I'd be happy to help
audit the material.

If any of the above makes sense, I'd be happy to be listed as a
contributor and see where it goes from there.

Thanks!
steven


On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 10:23 AM, geertjan wielenga
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Excellent. That's great to hear, Steven.
>
> We're now trying to draw up as complete a list of contributors as possible,
> see it near the end of the proposal here:
>
> https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/NetBeansProposal
>
> What kind of contributions would you be interested in providing for the
> future Apache NetBeans?
>
> Do you have concrete areas you'd like to work on? Or specific areas where
> you'd like to fix bugs?
>
> If so, would be great to add you to the list of contributors -- as well as
> anyone else on this list who is reading this and would like to get involved!
>
> Would be great to be able to make use of all the NetBeans API knowledge that
> we have built up amongst ourselves on this mailing list -- anyone is free to
> drop me a mail or respond to this one with ideas for how you might like to
> get involved in this upcoming Apache project around NetBeans.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gj
>
>
> On 13-9-2016 21:27, Steven Yi wrote:
>>
>> For what it's worth, I find the proposed changes very inviting and
>> find myself more interested now to make contributions than I had in
>> the past.  I do have a small dream that a Github-based system can be
>> worked out, one similar to Apache Groovy.  Assuming the project will
>> be accepted for incubation, I look forward to following the transition
>> and looking at opportunities to contribute.
>>
>> Many thanks to Sun, Oracle, and all involved to bring Netbeans this
>> far, and best wishes for where Netbeans goes from here!
>>
>> steven
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 3:03 PM, Matthias Bläsing
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey,
>>>
>>> Am Dienstag, den 13.09.2016, 10:36 +0200 schrieb geertjan wielenga:
>>>>
>>>> Here's the proposal published over the past hour:
>>>>
>>>> https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/NetBeansProposal
>>>>
>>>> Take note of the many initial committers, which includes James
>>>> Gosling (father of Java), a range of developers from various
>>>> organizations, as well as a big group from Oracle.
>>>
>>> Broadening and simplifying the netbeans contribution process is very
>>> good and it looks as if the general response is positive. I hope this
>>> is not just to write off netbeans silently, that would be a shame.
>>>
>>> One think that should be carefully taken care is making sure the
>>> current contributers are included in the effort. The initial committer
>>> list for example does not cover the current committers to the netbeans
>>> codebase (or at least not the complete list).
>>>
>>> Hoping for a bright future for netbeans (Apache or not)
>>>
>>> Matthias
>
>