A few things I’m finding a minor annoyance in Netbeans at the moment…

1. Netbeans is not an island.

I’m the only one using Netbeans on our project. I’m the small deformed child, in the corner of the class, that none of the other kids wants to play with.
Our projects are all driven off ant build scripts, so the logical way to use NB (when everyone else is using Eclipse or Intelli) is a free-form project (i.e. “Java Project with Existing Ant Script”). Okay, that works fine, but when you want to compile a single file from within the IDE, the ant script ide-file-targets.xml is created — that’s still okay, I can hack so that the internal classpath in that file points at the classpath in our main build script. But what about code completion, and the other IDE tools that rely on knowing the classpath?
First, right-click on the Project, select Properties, then Java Sources Classpath, then reproduce the classpath you’ve already created in the build script….?

Hmmm. That’s a word that starts with A and rhymes with “pass”.

A related note: I hate the ant icon on freeform projects in NB6. Go back to the old one.

2. A Project is not an island.

If NetBeans is not an island, neither are the projects in it. If you hit Ctrl and move your mouse pointer over a class name you can jump to the implementation… but not if that class is defined in another project. There might be a way to do this — but it ain’t obvious.

3. Why can’t I turn off Editor Hints?

I don’t like them. I don’t need them. And if I do, I’ll ask. But the problem is, there’s no obvious option that says “Use Editor Hints” to turn them off, and I’ve been through the advanced options — a number of times.

Besides, checkstyle covers all the stuff we actually want to check for.

4. “Help” is rubbish.

Stick it in a proper browser, so I can at least hit CTRL+F and find something in the current page. Oh yeah, and my up and down arrows don’t work in the help window either. Might be a Linux issue. But maybe not.

5. Where’s “Jump to Resource”?

Alt+Shift+O opens a dialog to jump to a “type” (class/interface/etc), which is nice. But Eclipse will open any resource: Python scripts, build scripts, whatever. Gimme that instead.

6. Fix Imports doesn’t remember what I chose last time.

Chances are if I select commons LogFactory one time, I’m going to want to select it the next time. I do not want to select it from a drop-down menu every time.

7 Minimal installation wanted.

I want to specify a minimal installation. All non-essential modules switched off. Everything that doesn’t stop the IDE from falling over in a steaming heap. Code completion yes — built-in Tomcat, app server integration, HTTP monitor, J2EE blueprints, integration, etc, etc, etc… absolutely not. I’ll switch on the bits I want, thanks all the same. In fact, don’t even bother including them in the distribution. Download on demand.

8. Reformat

If you say reformat xml, surely it means fully reformat? Not just reformat a bit. Either that, or relabel the menu option to “Half-assed Reformat Code”.

Okay, so that’s only eight. But Top Ten rolls off the tongue better than Top Eight…