Before you use Distributed NetBeans, become familiar with the NetBeans 7.0.1 IDE.
Distributed NetBeans is a plug-in to standard NetBeans that allows the user to run NetBeans on a non-OpenVMS desktop, and edit, build, and execute programs on an OpenVMS machine on the network.
Distributed NetBeans works with any desktop that runs NetBeans 7.0.1 These include Windows, Linux, HP-UX, MAC-OS, Solaris, and others.
The Distributed NetBeans plug-in acts as a client to an IDE Server process on the remote OpenVMS machine. The IDE Server on the remote OpenVMS machine creates processes on behalf of an OpenVMS user account to execute DCL commands or user commands such as compiles. Output from those commands is sent back to the PC for parsing.
The Distributed NetBeans client plug-in has the following features:
• DCL command file execution support
• C/C++,
Fortran, Basic, and Pascal editing and remote compilation support
and
error message parsing
• Remote execution support
• Remote Ant support, including OpenVMS-specific Ant tasks
• Remote MMS and Bash shell script execution support
In Distributed NetBeans 5.0, all work must be done from inside a project. An IDE project is a group of Java source files and associated information about what belongs on the classpath, how to build and run the project, and so forth. You can create standard projects that use an IDE-generated Ant script to build the project, or create free-form projects that are based on your existing Ant scripts.
Any standard NetBeans Java and J2EE projects can be converted to a remote project after they have been created from within NetBeans. In addition, Distributed NetBeans includes a project type specifically for OpenVMS 3GL projects.
For more information about projects in the IDE, see the NetBeans 7.0.1 IDE documentation and the IDE Help topic.