NetBeans: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 13. Extending NetBeans

There any number of reasons to develop extensions to NetBeans. Perhaps you are a developer, working on a project that has some unique needs (such as deployment to a particular application server or use of a code analysis tool), and you use NetBeans and would like to have support for that tool integrated into your development environment. Or you could have a development tool that you would like to integrate with NetBeans and sell as an extension. Or you could simply be embarking on a project to create a large desktop application, and you can save several person-years by using the NetBeans core without its development-tool-specific functionality to handle the menus, windowing, file access, configuration, and browsing aspects of your application.

This half of the book is about writing modules to plug into NetBeans to extend its functionality. So it is of particular interest to people developing or using tools for software development, people developing desktop applications in Java, or anyone who simply uses the NetBeans IDE and would like to change the way something works. We assume you have some familiarity with NetBeans as a development tool and its user interface components and with the Java language.

The design of NetBeans is also a great example of well-crafted object-oriented architecture. Odds are good that this book will affect the way you think about how to build software.

Extensions to NetBeans are developed by writing Java code to the NetBeans ...