Hi, What's the current "best practice" or "golden path" for building and distributing a NetBeans Platform application and managing its dependencies (e.g., from Maven central)? That's a big general question, so I'll ask some specifics:
- Should I ever try to use JPMS modules when building a NetBeans Platform application? I've found that in my projects (which are NetBeans Maven-based projects, not NetBeans Platform projects), when I use JPMS modules, it can cause problems for NetBeans [1], so I wonder if it's really wise to even try mixing JPMS modules with NetBeans projects at this time, let alone NetBeans Platform projects. - Should I ever try to make a Maven-based NetBeans Platform application? I see there are Maven templates in NetBeans that offer to create a Maven-based NetBeans Platform project. However, all the examples online and in books that I've seen so far do NOT use Maven. In spite of this, recent emails on this list have suggested that Maven-based NetBeans projects are generally preferred over the older Ant-based project types. So I'm a bit confused about what the currently prevailing wisdom on this matter is, in the case of NetBeans Platform projects. Perhaps Maven can be used to build NetBeans Platform applications/modules or not, depending on the situation. As a beginner in the world of NetBeans Platform, I just want to try making a NetBeans Platform project using whatever approach is more likely to work without trouble and remain supported by the community. But what approach might that be? - If I want to use a library that is available from Maven central in my NetBeans Platform application, is the best option to just manually download the JAR file, manually create a NetBeans Platform "wrapper module" for the JAR, and then use the "wrapper module" in my application? I tried using the nbm-maven-plugin to use dependencies from Maven in a simple NetBeans Platform application, but I encountered problems and couldn't figure out how to get it to work. So to me it feels like the answer to this question is "yes, at the moment you should manage your JARs manually in order to have the best developer experience when working on a NetBeans Platform application," but I'm not sure. I'm curious to hear the opinions of people who have more experience with the NetBeans Platform. - If I want to build a stand-alone release of my NetBeans Platform application that I can distribute to an end user, what's a good way to do it? It seems that some of the features in NetBeans that build a stand-alone release will only work when your project is not a Maven-based NetBeans Platform application. Additionally, although recent developments like jlink and jpackage have made it somewhat easier to produce stand-alone application bundles that don't require the user to first install a JRE, which is nice, it seems that these tools sometimes require the use of JPMS modules, which can be problematic in NetBeans (see above). And in any case NetBeans does not yet seem to expose any way to take advantage of these new tools. So what IS the most common way that people build a release version of a NetBeans Platform application, anyway? Ultimately, I just don't understand what the current "best practice" or "golden path" is for using NetBeans Platform. I'd like to know, though. I am happy to help improve the tutorials, but the problem is that even after reading various tutorials and documentation, and even after experimenting quite a bit on my own, I don't even understand what the path of least resistance is supposed to be. Footnotes: [1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/netbeans-users/202010.mbox/%3c87sg9wgt19....@gmail.com%3E -- Chris
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