Versioning Support Cookbook

This is a quick how-to for creating a plug-in module for a versioning system. IDE supports several versioning systems out-of-the-box but there are numerous other systems still not directly supported in the IDE. We want and encourage community members and especially creators of these versioning systems to come and create the support for NetBeans.

This how-to tries to make this process as easy as possible and puts you right into the process of coding the plugin itself without first messing with Versioning SPI and NetBeans API specifics.

Create a Versioning plug-in step by step

1. Setup you working environment

• Clone and build the main NetBeans repository at http://hg.netbeans.org/main

2. Download Versioning Module skeleton

• Download the project skeleton from here: VCS skeleton
• Unzip the skeleton code to a directory where you will develop the module

3. Build and test the skeleton

• Start NetBeans and open the skeleton project
• Build and Run the project to check that all is set up
• Scan TODOs in the skeleton code for primary interest points

Development documents and references

• VCS SPI overview
• Versioning SPI Architecture Review
• VCS SPI javadoc
• Versioning Support UI Spec
• Browse Versioning Sources online