Part of a project I'm on has a GUI app that is built with Netbeans using the GUI design tools that come in that IDE.
But this is only part of a bigger project, and needs to be built in an environment that does not have Netbeans installed (it happens to be a Gradle-based build on Jenkins). I've gotten builds to (seemingly) work, but keep running into inexplicable run-time errors (i.e., dependencies appear to be met with identical jars on the classpath and so on, but attempts to read resources from the project jar fail.).
From googling around, it looks like this might have something to do with compiling .form files and then including some dependency for the resulting java. (though, the Netbeans build does not add any jars above what our gradle build adds).
So the question is... can this even be done? or does a proper build simply rely on some hidden build-time mojo that's going on in Netbeans?
Yes, you can compile the classes without NetBeans. Just be sure you do not any NetBeans library, like AbsoluteLayout. The .form files are for NetBeans showing you components with Matisse, but all the generated code will be in the .java file.
Related
I don't understand exactly what is the way of working with maven projects in Eclipse.
The problems I have are often with projects I download from github. If I set the project myself it usually work, so I think I'm doing something different from the majority of people.
I'll try to detail a specific case:
I clone a repo, let's say: https://github.com/spring-guides/tut-spring-boot-oauth2
In Eclipse I import "existing maven project"
The project has a "Maven nature" as indicated by M on the folder icon
I try to run java class with main from Eclipse. First strange thins is that the "Run As" menu doesn't have "Run as a Java application"
I have to configure the configuration manually. Now it runs, but strange things happens, like I can't edit the file as the "content assist" throw errors instead of giving the normal assists.
I notice that the project has no "source folder". So my first instinct is to add a Java nature or select src as source folder
So I add Java nature to the project. This is a disaster. It can compile anymore as it can find packages. All classes have errors. I try to play around setting source folders on /src or /src/main/java. Sometimes I fix the errors but I can't run (and now I have run as Java application) but when I run it can't load the class
So in the end, I'm a bit confused and I don't know if I explained clearly what I'm doing.
I think I would like to know in a simple way how people are doing it, rather than trying to correct my steps as I'm probably creating a mess myself.
Any help or suggestion welcome.
I'm using the last version of eclipse. I don't know which other tool's versions are relevant.
P.S. I also refresh,restart,clean rebuild the project often after touching things...but it doesn't get better
Maven is a build (management) tool. Simply spoken, its task is to create a JAR that can be used as a dependency/library by other projects or when running java -jar ....
Running a project's code isn't part of it (apart from unit and integration tests code and by using non-default plugins for special situations). Running code is part of Eclipse (or any other IDE) with its Run Configurations.
I'm trying out Java 9 Jigsaw module system (no module experience yet) and would like to use it for capsuling the classes within my project, but it's confusing.
According to this article it should be possible to have multiple modules within ONE project. I made a new project in Eclipse Oxygen (Java 9 is supported) with the same structure as shown in the article. But Eclipse keeps telling me that I must not have more than one module-info.java in a project.
I really don't know how to tell Eclipse that it should use the "multi-module-mode". And I really would appreciate not having to create a new project for every single module.
This works:
This not:
But according to this article something like that should work:
And how about deployment of a modularized project with Eclipse? There is nothing to see about the new jmod extension. Do I still export it as a runnable JAR file like before?
Notice that my questions refer to working with the IDE (no command line, I mean with an IDE that should be possible, right?) Thank you for enlightening me.
Currently, Eclipse requires you to create a separate project for each module (e. g. because each module has its own Java Build Path).
To understand this design decision, consider that Java modules correspond to OSGi bundles / Eclipse plug-ins and it has always been to have a separate project for each bundle/plug-in. If you come from the Maven world, you would probably expect a deeper folder structure instead. But modules are self-contained and combining several modules into one project would only add an additional folder level without meaning. However, Eclipse supports nested projects and so-called working sets if you need an additional folder level.
Exporting modules as images is planned for Eclipse 2019-03 (4.11), on March 20, 2019 (see Eclipse bug 518445). Exporting modules as JARs that can be used on the modulepath (-m) already works (see my video).
I don't know if this question is still open for an answer, but you can solve this problem by simply removing all source folders on the build path. At least this works for Eclipse 2021-12 version.
As you can see this is a demo project from the Official Gradle Guide Book and it has multiple modules. Each module has its own module-info.java.
project structure in IntelliJ IDEA
If I open this project in Eclipse it will give me the 'duplicated entries on module-info.java' error.
Eclipse shows the error
But if I delete all the source folders on the build path, the error is gone and the project can be built and run without problem.
project properties: Java build path
The only problem is that you have to build the project with Gradle so that it will produce the .jar of each module and you have to include them in the libraries later.
include all the .jar in libraries
I think this is probably the same solution mentioned by howlger above.
I'm creating a Java project which includes a few libraries written by myself. However these libraries are not finished and sometimes require some edits. Because I'm working by myself, I find this more efficient than finishing all libraries perfectly before using them in my project.
My question is: is it possible to automatically rebuild a modified library when building the project which uses it?
Subquestion: what is the optimal configuration for my purposes? Should I export libraries as jar and copy them into the final project or should I configure buildpaths of my project to retrieve them in their respective folders?
Subsubquestion: is it correct to use .jar libraries in the same way that one uses dynamic libraries in c++?
If you have Eclipse set to "build automatically", it'll take care of rebuilding the library projects whenever you make changes, as you go along. You should set your client program to depend on either the Eclipse projects (if doing everything inside Eclipse) or the Maven artifacts (if using m2e). I strongly prefer using Maven for all my Java builds, but it might be overkill for something small. Whatever you do, don't manually export and reimport the libraries.
All libraries in Java are dynamic, and a C++ .so or .dll is the basic equivalent.
I'm trying to convert a Netbeans 6.9.1 project into a scripted build (without netbeans). Of course, it fails (or I wouldn't be asking for help).
In the failure it says that the org.apache.commons.httpclient package does not exist. (Of course, it worked when we ran the build in Netbeans).
Now I know exactly where the commons-httpclient.jar file is located in my project structure, but I can't seem to tell it to the compiler via the ant build files and the netbeans property files.
Perhaps related to this is when I ran "ant -v" to build my software, it said,
Property lib.mystuff.classpath has not been set. This variable is important, I guess, because
the file nbproject/project.properties uses lib.mystuff.classpath in its definition of javac.classpath, which of course tells the Java compiler where to find the JARs.
So...when moving a Netbeans project to a netbeans-independent scripted build, how can the build script set these properties? Also, how can I ensure that the jar file gets included in the ant build?
I appreciate any help I can get, as I am a Java newbie.
UPDATE AFTER ACCEPTING ANSWER FROM vkraemer:
There are a few best practices for build scripts for production software:
Put everything needed for a build under a single directory tree. (Netbeans = fail)
Put everything in source code control. (I did that)
The first line of the build script should clear all environment variables.
The next section of the build script should explicitly set all environment variables to values which are known to work.
The next part of the build should be able to execute using command-line programs such as javac, ant, cc, etc, and must not depend on firing up an IDE such as Eclipse or Netbeans.
It is a shame that Netbeans makes this hard.
I did a quick look in a Java Application project and found the following...
javac.classpath = ${libs.MyStuff.classpath}
libs.MyStuff.classpath is defined in %HOME%/.netbeans/6.9.1/build.properties.
You may be able to get by doing the following...
ant -Dlibs.MyStuff.classpath=c:\a\b\c.jar
You would need to do more if you have multiple jar files in the MyStuff library that you created in NetBeans.
I have a project in Eclipse that currently has no ANT build file, but is about to have one created (to facilitate building jars). I'd like to write the build file so that it would work for both. I was just going to write the full build in ANT but I noticed this line in an IBM Help doc.
The Java builder runs the internal
Eclipse Java compiler which in turn is
responsible for indexing your source
so that searching, refactoring and
many other features are available.
Thus it is not possible to replace the
internal Eclipse Java compiler by
using a project builder. You can
disable the Java builder and you can
control when the Java Builder runs
with respect to the project builders
that you define.
Do I need to write the ANT file so that it conditionally compiles (javac) only outside Eclipse? Are there other things I need to do to make ANT and Eclipse play nicely together?
There are maybe more sophisticated approaches, but here's what works for me. Just set up your Java project in Eclipse to output classes to the same dir as your Ant buildfile does. Let Eclipse compile your project using normal Java compiler.
During typical development, you will probably be changing Java source files and wanting to see that they compile. The Eclipse Java compiler will take care of this. Less frequently you will need to rebuild jars. Ant will take care of that. You can kick off the Ant build when you need to from the command line or from Eclipse.