Discovered new feature in NetBeans 5 Beta 2
One problem in the past with NetBeans 4.x was that, when it came time to create a new project, you could either use your own build script and loose a lot of the capabilities of the IDE or use a straight NetBeans project and loose the advantage of having your own build script. This, in my opinion was one of the biggest problems with NetBeans. If you used your own build script, you lost the ability to run a web application and run individual JUnit tests (unless you could put that functionality into your build script).
With NetBeans 5 this has changed. The other day I tried to create a new project from existing sources. The existing sources already had a build file. In the past NetBeans would have failed trying to create the project. Now, it pops up a little dialogue telling you that there is an existing build file and what would you like to call NetBean’s build script. It defaults to nbbuild.xml.
This is a very nice little feature. Now I can have my build script and the power of the IDE. At this rate, the NetBeans crew are going to release a top notch IDE when they release version 5. This will be the release to compete head to head with Eclipse and Intellij IDEA.
