JavaFX 1.0 On Linux: NetBeans Plugin
[Update (Wed Jun 3 07:45:43 PDT 2009)]: As of June 2, 2009, you can download the Linux and Solaris version of JavaFX 1.2 SDK directly from http://javafx.com. The Linux and Solaris support is preview only.[/]
This is a follow up on my Using JavaFX 1.0 On Linux seven days ago.
That blog entry was picked up by:
A commenter on my blog (and several commenters on the above cited blogs) asked about if the JavaFX NetBeans plugin can be made to work on Linux. Sure it can. It's Java.
However, since the plugin is not officially released for Linux, things are a little bit confusing: If you browse for Available Plugins and search for javafx, you will see three plugins:
- JavaFX Source Debug
- JavaFX 1.0
- JavaFX Weather Sample
but they cannot be installed. The error message reads:
No plugin providing the capability javafx.sdk could be found.
These three are leftovers from the JavaFX Preview SDK release. We do not want them. We need to browse to the NetBeans update center to find the ones we want:
http://updates.netbeans.org/netbeans/updates/6.5/uc/final/stable/modules/javafx/
It contains 23 *.nbm (Netbeans module) files. Download them all into a directory.
In NetBeans plugin manager, go to the Downloaded tab and click on the Add Plugins... button, and add all the downloaded files. You will see 21 plugins showing up in the window. Now *uncheck* the three JavaFX Preview SDK plugins listed above and install the rest 18. The installation should go normally, prompting you to restart Netbeans.
The two *.nbm files that the NetBeans plugin manager did not show contains the Windows and Mac versions of the JavaFX SDK 1.0. We ignore the Windows file and concentrate on the Mac version. We do a manual installation:
- Unzip the file (It's a Zip formatted file)
- This generated a few subdirectories, one of them is netbeans
- The netbeans directory further contains subdirectories config, javafx-sdk1.0 and modules
- In your NetBeans 6.5 installation directory, create a subdirectory javafx2 (in parallel to the java2, groovy1 and ruby2 subdirectories) and copy the config, javafs-sdk1.0 and modules directories into javafx2.
- You may need to go into the javafx-sdk1.0/bin subdirectory and make the scripts there executable.
That's it. You now can create JavaFX projects in NetBeans 6.5, edit, compile, debug and preview the project.
Enjoy!
Or wait for the official Linux release, which is only (I heard it somewhere) weeks away.
(Disclaimer: I know very little about NetBeans modules. Although the above procedure appears to work for me, I'm not sure if there is a shorter way to do all this, or if it will have any negative effects on your NetBeans installation. YMMV.)