Apache NetBeans IDE 9.0 Release: Features, IP Cleanup, Java 9/10 Support, and Community Survey Results

Since Oracle donated its NetBeans development environment to the Apache Software Foundation in October 2016, Apache has been working on the NetBeans IDE, and Apache NetBeans IDE 9.0 has now been officially released. Prior to the release, a community satisfaction survey was conducted to assess whether it would become the best Java IDE.

Apache NetBeans IDE 9.0 primarily achieves two goals:

Cleaning up intellectual‑property (IP) issues related to the code donated by Oracle.

Providing support for Java 9 and Java 10.

Apache NetBeans is an open‑source integrated development environment that supports Java, JavaScript, C/C++, PHP and other languages. It is also a development platform that can be extended with plugins.

Originally developed by Sun, NetBeans was handed over to Apache in September 2016. Oracle performed three separate code donations to migrate NetBeans from Oracle to Apache, because the project is large and has a 20‑year history. The incremental donation focused first on the core platform (module system, window system, menu bar, etc.) and then added Java SE features such as project templates, the Java editor, and new language capabilities like Jigsaw, JLink and JShell.

In the most recent donation, Oracle contributed roughly 4 million lines of code, and in June of the same year another zip containing about 1.5 million lines was donated, covering modules for Enterprise Java, JavaScript, PHP, Groovy, and features for mobile and web development.

Some of the donated code is covered by patents owned by Oracle; most of these patents are held by Oracle itself, while a small portion is shared with other companies. Consequently, patent‑protected code must be replaced with alternative open‑source implementations to resolve legal issues.

Support for local‑variable type inference (var)

New hints, error handling, and refactoring for the JDK 10 “var” type.

Hints when converting explicit types to var .

Hints when converting var back to an explicit type.

Error messages for incorrect var declarations, including array declarations.

Support for the Jigsaw modular system

NetBeans 9 supports JPMS (Jigsaw). In addition to the traditional classpath, the modulepath is now included in NetBeans project templates. A standard NetBeans Java SE Ant project can be a single JDK 9 module by adding a module‑info.java file to the default package, and auto‑completion for module‑info.java is provided.

New Java Modular Application Project Type

A new Java Modular project type allows multiple JDK 9 modules to be developed within a single Ant‑based NetBeans project, simplifying dependency management through exports and requires declarations in module‑info.java .

Support for Java Shell (JShell)

Java Shell, introduced in JDK 9 via JEP 222, provides a REPL (read‑evaluate‑print‑loop) for Java.

Community Acceptance Survey Results

Overall Quality: 32.5 % of users consider NetBeans 9.0 better than 8.2, 10.3 % prefer 8.2, and 57.3 % see little difference.

Performance: 27.4 % think NetBeans 9.0 outperforms 8.2, while most see no noticeable gap.

Java Editor: 75.2 % are satisfied with the editor, though 18.8 % note issues mainly in code completion and compilation.

Java Debugger: 65.8 % find the debugger adequate; 14.5 % do not use it at all.

Java Refactoring: About two‑thirds consider refactoring support appropriate, but over 20 % report problems such as exceptions when deleting or renaming files and inconsistencies in interface changes.

Download Links

Apache NetBeans 9.0 (July 2018): https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb90/nb90.html

Apache NetBeans 9.0 RC1 (May 2018): https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb90/nb90-rc1.html

Apache NetBeans 9.0 Beta (February 2018): https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb90/nb90-beta.html

References

https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb90/index.html

https://www.oschina.net/news/98453/netbeans-9-acceptance-survey

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Results+from+Apache+NetBeans+IDE+9.0+Community+Acceptance+survey