##Build Actions NetBeans Plugin##

This is a simple plugin which provides a button to execute ANT-based actions on Projects and Project Files.

Its a little like NetBeans "bookmarking" feature, but in a more generalized way where a single button can do different things based on the Project or Project File that is highlighted. I wrote it for a couple of reasons.

• I was annoyed with not being able to perform some actions easily in Netbeans
• I wanted to try writing a Netbeans plugin
• I wanted to use Neko, the cat, as an icon button

You can use it to do things like

• Run specific ANT targets contained in the project build.xml file.
• Copy selected files in selected projects to other locations.
• Execute custom actions for specific files or projects.

###Configuration is Simple###

Once you have installed the plugin into NetBeans, a new "Build Actions" tab will appear in the Miscellaneous section of the Options page.

In the text area within this tab, you configure a single build.xml file to perform the actions you want for a given situation. Typically you will have different target for each action you want to perform.

This build.xml will be passed the following properties

• project-build-file - This is the path of the build.xml file for the project that is currently selected.
• project-folder - This is the base folder for the selected project.
• primary-path - This is the full path to the primary file that is selected, if there is one selected.
• primary-file - This is the file name only of the selected file, if there is one selected.

Finally, executed, the target that will be called will be the name of the project, as defined in the name attribute of the project tag in build.xml for the project.

With this, you can do a variety of things, in combination with all the regular ANT facilities (like the condition tags.)

####Examples####

One problem I have noticed with Netbeans, is that there is no easy to compile ALL of the unit test code. This can be annoying when you have supporting classes that need recompiled but you only want to run a single unit test.

With this plugin, you can do this pretty simply with the following code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project default="default" name="BuildActions">
  <echo message="project-build-file=${project-build-file}"/>
  <echo message="project-folder=${project-folder}"/>
  <echo message="primary-path=${primary-path}"/>
  <echo message="primary-file=${primary-file}"/>

  <target name="My_Netbeans_Project">
    <ant antfile="${project-build-file}" inheritall="false" target="compile-test"/>
  </target>

</project>

Say you want to do something with some specific files in a project, maybe for example, you want to copy the generated JAR file to some other locations. Yes, I know NetBeans has the notion of project dependencies, but maybe you are inheriting some legacy code which is not set up easily to do this.

In this example, when I select the my-project.jar and click the Build Actions button, the JAR file will be copied /work/source/some-other-project/lib.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project default="default" name="BuildActions">
  <echo message="project-build-file=${project-build-file}"/>
  <echo message="project-folder=${project-folder}"/>
  <echo message="primary-path=${primary-path}"/>
  <echo message="primary-file=${primary-file}"/>

  <condition property="my-project-jar">
    <matches pattern="my-project.*[.]jar" string="${primary-file}"/>
  </condition>

  <target name="My_Netbeans_Project" if="my-project-jar">
    <echo message="copy ${primary-file}"/>
    <copy file="${project-folder}/${primary-path}" todir="/work/source/some-other-project/lib" overwrite="yes"/>
  </target>
</project>

###Oh and More Thing###

The plugin will also look for a build-neko.xml file in the project's root folder. If it exists, it will do all the above using that build file instead of the global one in the Options.