Creating a Kenai Project in NetBeans IDE
This tutorial demonstrates how to use NetBeans IDE to create a project on Kenai.
When you create a project on Kenai, you create an environment that is designed to help developers that are working
together on a project.
When you are a member of a project, you have access to a development infrastructure
that includes source code hosting services, issue tracking and various communication channels to help developers stay connected.
Many of the services provided by Kenai are fully integrated and accessible directly from the NetBeans IDE.
There are two ways to create a project on Kenai from the IDE, and how you decide to create a project largely
depends upon the project's requirements and how far along you are in the development cycle.
If you already have a NetBeans project, you can use the Share on Kenai wizard to create a project on Kenai for that project,
but you can also create a project on Kenai before you have any source code.
For example, you might want to create a project and capture the project requirements on the project wiki,
collect required files in an archive for downloading and add members to the project before any coding starts.
After you create the project, other developers can view details about the project on the project page on Kenai and
they can open the project and download the sources from within the IDE.
For most projects, developers do not have to be members of a project to view the sources and project pages.
Any developers that are interested in working together and contributing to a project can request to be added as a project member.
The project administrator can add members and assign roles from the project page on Kenai.
In addition to creating a new project, you can open and retrieve the sources of any Kenai project
from within the IDE. For most projects, you do not need to be a member of the project to open a Kenai project.
For more, see Opening a Kenai Project in NetBeans IDE.
Note. The projects on Kenai will soon be migrated to java.net.
For more information about this process, please consult the Project Kenai.
Watch the Video of Creating a Kenai Project in NetBeans IDE.
Contents
To follow this tutorial, you need the following software and resources.
Notes.
- NetBeans IDE 6.9 requires Java Development Kit (JDK) 6.
- NetBeans IDE 6.9 supports working with the Kenai framework, however, references to Kenai in the IDE were changed to Team to prepare for the move to Java.net.
Before starting this tutorial you may want to familiarize yourself with
the following Kenai documentation.
Creating an Account on Kenai
To create a project on Kenai you must first create an account at Kenai.com.
You cannot create an account from within the IDE.
You can skip this exercise if you already have an account.
- Choose Team > Login to Kenai from the main menu.
- Click Sign up now to open the Kenai sign up page in your browser.
Alternatively, you can open https://kenai.com/people/new in your browser.
- Enter the account details in the Kenai registration form in your browser. Click Create Account.
After you submit the form you will receive an email to confirm your registration.
- Confirm your registration.
After you complete the registration process you can login to Kenai.com and modify your profile
by clicking Edit My Profile under Profile in the left column.
For more about editing your profile, watch the Setting Up Your User Profile screencast.
You can find the screencast listed under Screencasts & Tutorials on the Kenai help pages.
Logging in to Kenai
When you have an account on Kenai you can login directly from the IDE.
- Choose Team > Kenai > Login to Kenai to open the login dialog box.
Alternatively, you can open click Login to Kenai in the Kenai dashboard (Window > Kenai Dashboard from the main menu).
- Enter your username and password.
- (Optional) Select Online on Chat to also login to the chat server.
- Click Login.
When you click Login, the Kenai dashboard opens in the IDE.
The Kenai dashboard displays your open Kenai projects and enables you to easily
work with project issues and download project sources.
Creating a Project on Kenai
This exercise describes how to use the New Kenai Project wizard in the IDE to create a project on Kenai.com.
You do not need to have a NetBeans project or any local sources to create a new project on Kenai.
If you have an existing local project with sources, you can specify the location of the local sources in the wizard and
the IDE can add the sources when the project is created.
You can also choose to only create a project, and modify the project later to add services such as a repository or an issue tracker.
Note.
Projects on Kenai are available to the public and are covered by the project's license and the
Kenai Terms of Use.
Note. You cannot use the New Kenai Project wizard to add a NetBeans project to an existing repository.
The IDE performs the following tasks.
- creates a project on Kenai
- creates an issue tracker for the project
- creates a remote repository
- commits the project sources to the remote repository (optional)
- initializes the local repository directory
- creates a chat room for the project.
To create a project on Kenai, perform the following steps.
- Login to Kenai (if not already logged in).
- Choose Team > Kenai > New Kenai Project from the main menu.
To create a Kenai project for a NetBeans project, open the NetBeans project and
right-click the project node in the Projects window and choose Share on Kenai.
The New Kenai Project wizard will contain the location of your NetBeans project.
- Check that the Project Location is correct.
- Type the Kenai Project Name.
The project name is used to generate the project page on Kenai.com.
By default the IDE uses the name of the NetBeans project.
- Type the Project Title.
The project title is the name that is displayed on the project page on Kenai.com and in the IDE.
- Type a Project Description (optional).
- Select a Project License. Click Next.
You must select a license, but you can change the license later.
Members who participate and contribute to the project must also agree to the terms of the project's license.
- Select the type of repository for your project and a name to append to the repository.
The IDE has integrated support for Subversion and Mercurial.
If your project does not have any sources you can choose None from the dropdown list.
You can create a repository later on the project's page on Kenai.com.
- Specify a location for the local repository.
The location for the repository must be an empty directory.
- Specify any projects or folders that you want to add to the repository.
- (Optional) Select Commit the source into the repository.
If this option is selected, the IDE will add the sources to the remote repository when you click Finish.
This can take some time if your project has a lot of sources.
- Select an issue tracking system. Click Next.
- Review the Summary. Click Finish.
When you click Finish, the IDE creates the project on Kenai and adds
the project to the list under My Projects in the Kenai dashboard.
When you create a project you are automatically added as a project member with the role of administrator.
All projects that you have joined are listed under My Projects in the Kenai Dashboard.
To see additional details about the project, click the Open icon to open the project under Open Projects.
You can expand the project node under Open Projects for an overview of project issues and messages.
Committing Sources
Kenai offers Subversion and Mercurial version control repositories as one of the services available to hosted projects.
If you chose to create a repository for a local NetBeans project in the New Kenai Project wizard,
the sources for the project are now under version control.
If you created a new project, you can start adding sources to the local repository you specified in the wizard.
The IDE recognizes when sources are in a local repository and
you can perform version control tasks from the Projects, Files and Favorites windows.
For more about Kenai support for version control systems, see the Kenai documentation on
Source Code Management.
This exercise demonstrates how to commit files to a remote Subversion repository on Kenai.
- Open the Projects window in the IDE.
The names of source files that are new to the repository are green.
The badge on the directories indicates that they contain files that need to be committed.
- Right-click the file or directory that you want to commit to the repository and choose Subversion > Commit.
- Enter a message that describes the commit in the Commit dialog. Click Commit.
If you are making a commit that relates to a specific issue, you can identify the issue in the Commit dialog
by opening the Update Issue panel and specifying the issue tracker and issue id.
You can select Resolve as FIXED to change the status of the issue to Resolved.
For details on using Subversion in NetBeans IDE, see the
Guided Tour of Subversion.
Managing Project Settings
When you create a project on Kenai, you are automatically assigned the role of project administrator.
The project administrator is allowed to modify project details such as the project title and licenses
and configure the Kenai features that are enabled for the project.
Each project on Kenai has a project page where the administrator can manage the project settings.
You cannot edit the settings in the IDE, but you can click the details link for
the project in the Kenai dashboard to open the project page in your browser.
To edit project settings you need to be logged in to Kenai.com.
For more details, see the following Kenai.com documentation:
Adding Members to the Project
The project administrator can add members to a project and assign each member a role.
The administrator can add any registered Kenai user to a project as a member.
A Kenai user can become a member of any project by bookmarking the project.
A user that bookmarks a project is added to the project as a member in the role of Observer.
For definitions of the different roles, see the Kenai documentation for the
Members Tab.
To add a member to a project, perform the following steps.
- Click details next to the project name in the Kenai dashboard to open the project page on Kenai.com.
- Click Manage This Project on the project page.
- Click the Members tab to view a list of project members.
- Click Add Member. Enter the Kenai username and select a Role from the dropdown list. Click Add.
As the level of involvement of members change, an administrator can change the role of project members
by clicking edit next to the name of the member and selecting a role from the dropdown list.
The administrator can also modify the default permissions assigned to each role.
Setting Role Permissions
The level of access that registered (and unregistered) Kenai users have to each project feature is determined
by the permissions assigned to a role.
The project administrator can control the permissions for project members by assigning each member a role.
For each feature, the administrator can also modify the default permissions assigned to each role.
For more details about how to configure the project features and roles, see the following Kenai documentation:
The Features tab enables you to assign permissions to roles for each of the Kenai features available to the project.
- Click details next to the project name in the Kenai dashboard to open the project page on Kenai.com.
- Click Manage This Project on the project page.
- Click the Features tab to view a list of Kenai features available for the project.
- Click More next to the feature you want to modify and choose Set Role Permissions.
- Select the checkbox in the matrix to associate the permissions and roles.
See Also
For additional information on using NetBeans IDE in a collaborative environment, see the following tutorials.
