Where is the Platform and How Can I Build It?

In versions of NetBeans prior to 6.0, two major products were available for download: the IDE and the platform. The platform is the foundation on which the IDE is built, or looking at it another way, the platform is what's left over when you remove all the IDE features from the IDE. At any rate, the platform provides user interface components, build scripts, declarative configuration and many other features that can save you a lot of time and effort in creating your own application.

Because platform-based applications are themselves platforms that can be extended, the IDE can also be extended just as the platform can. Since you can remove features from a platform as well as add new ones, the availability of the platform and IDE let you choose between starting small and adding on (platform) or starting large and removing things (the IDE). Some feel the latter approach is better and even facing such a choice can be confusing to new users. If you're a new user, you'd do well to heed this advice and just use the IDE as a platform. It works just as well and is a lot less trouble.

But if you're still here, you may be asking where is the platform? Binary distributions of the platform are not being made available for 6.0, although issue #124372 has been filed to bring them back. In the meantime, if you want a platform binary, you'll have to create one yourself.

Building the platform is not difficult, but it's not intuitive either. To start, you will need to download the platform source ZIP file and unpack it to some directory. Open a command prompt to that directory and change to the nbbuild subdirectory. From there, issue the following command:

   ant -Dcluster.config=platform build-platform

If you're using Java 6, you'll need to add an extra property:

   ant -Dcluster.config=platform build-platform -Dpermit.jdk6.builds=true 

But be aware that it is not guaranteed to build under Java 6 due to language changes or compiler bugs. It is unlikely you will encounter such a problem in the platform build, though it has certainly been known to happen in the IDE build. If you find something that won't compile under Java 6 but does compile under Java 5, file a bug report (preferably with a patch) about it so it can be corrected. Meanwhile, you can use Java 5 to compile -- even when Java 6 is first in your path -- by using the nbjdk.home system property to point to your Java 5 installation:

   ant -Dcluster.config=platform build-platform -Dnbjdk.home=c:/devtools/jdk/jdk-1.5.0_u15

This will build the platform into the netbeans subdirectory (i.e. nbbuild/netbeans). You can zip or tar up the netbeans directory to create a ZIP distribution.

It's also possible to create platforms based on a different subset of the NetBeans project. Hints for doing this can be found here:

• Working with NetBeans Sources