NetBeans projects and AccuRev
One task that I have had to do for work is to come up with the directory structure for our new software. In doing this, I had two goals in mind:
- Keep the opening of projects as simple as possible in NetBeans
- Make sure that however the projects got into NetBeans, they could still use the full power that the IDE offers. This means making sure that I kept the full J2EE capabilities built into NetBeans.
In order to do this, I started with a nice little project structure in NetBeans. Then I made sure that the project structure compiled on my computer and someone else’s computer. So far so good.
For an SCM product we use the world’s least known application—AccuRev. In addition, we are using Exclusive Locking on our project’s depot. This means that only one developer can edit a file at a time. And then I checked in the file structure, project structure and all the NetBeans project files.
Apparently this is not something one should do (although I am still a little confused as to why).
Anyway, when trying to setup project dependencies in NetBeans, it requires write access to the private.properties file. Something that can not be done when using exclusive locking.
So, in the end, I had to go in to the project, setup all the dependencies and then go in and edit each project’s private.properties file to use relative paths instead of absolute ones. See, that was the problem all along. NetBeans uses absolute paths when referencing other projects. Why it does not use relative paths is beyond me.
The amazing thing is that this little change worked. I made all the changes and NetBeans didn’t complain once. Very cool.
The more I work with NetBeans, the more I like it.