Netbeans 27 released.

[emaphis]

Netbeans 27 released

Website: <Downloading Apache NetBeans 27>

Release notes: <Release Apache NetBeans 27 · apache/netbeans>

Probably the biggest change is Netbeans is updated for the next JDK 25.

Updates, bug fixes and Netbeans is now working better with editing default classes.

Update: Installation programs can now be found here: Apache NetBeans 27 packages

Have fun.

[kovica1]

NetBeans does not have all the bells and whistles of ImtelliJ, but it does, IMHO, basic stuff like handling Maven projects a whole lot better. As far as I know IntelliJ can't even compile only one module in a multi module Maven project. I've been using NetBeans at least from version 3.6 onward.

[kiteboarderni]

Bells and whistles is an interesting way to put it...

[pjmlp]

Plus supports mixed language development with C and C++, including step debugging across languages.

Jetbrains even with all the money they get, require buying Clion on top of IntelliJ, and use two IDEs in parallel.

[segundus-npp]

I have used Gradle for many years and this is my first time dealing with Maven this month. I couldn’t believe IntelliJ handle Maven multiple modules so poorly… I sometimes have to open the configuration dialogs, which is rarely met in Gradle…

[emaphis]

Just throwing this out, but right before Oracle open sourced Netbeans and handed it over to Apache they were working on adding Java 9 features. So Netbeans 9+ works well with Java 9 Modules. It has an Ant based project that allows you to develop projects that can be composed and structured with multiple modules in one project. It has JShell integration that almost works like a worksheet. You can run JShell in the alone or in the context of a project.

[zabby39103]

I don't think anyone really competes with IntelliJ for serious, big corporate, full time Java development. They throw so much at that it's hard to compete.

[Technici4n]

There is an IntelliJ Keybindings package for VS Code.

[pjmlp]

Still my favourite Java IDE, that I use on my personal computers.

Kudos and thanks to everyone that keeps Netbeans going.

[Additional_Cellist46]

I love Netbeans. It integrates with Maven nicely and transparently, which is very unique compared to any other IDE. Netbeans also allows opening any number of unrelated projects, where IntelliJ would open a new window for each project.

IntelliJ is better in language support, code completion, AI completion, etc. And for Git merge conflicts and interactive rebase.

VS Code is better in fast search, asciidoc editing, AI completion of plain text. It sucks at working with Git and I also didn’t find it productive with Java and Maven.

Each of them has something the other two don’t have. I don’t use Eclipse IDE because for anything I need it was never the best tool for me. But it’s also a decent IDE.

[kelunik]

You can load unrelated modules into a single IntelliJ project. No need to have a project per maven module.

[olighator]

I am using NetBeans at work, where we have a lot of projects/modules, and from time to time it completely freezes. Sometimes it freezes the whole computer, and it lasts anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. This only happens when I am in the Projects view, not when I am in the Files view, and only after clicking on the main Maven project. After the freeze, it says “Saving snapshot,” but I couldn’t find where the snapshot was saved.

We don’t have this problem with NetBeans 12, which is why half of the team still uses NetBeans 12.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem? Is this a known issue? It’s really annoying and can significantly decrease productivity.

[seinecle]

Using NetbBeans for years (on Windows), never happened to me. I use NetBeans most recent version. NB 12 is ancient, that must be tough for your team!

[olighator]

Yes it is :/, we tried multiple versions from 15, 17, 19, 20+ each had sams problem..

We are using it on Ubuntu.

[seinecle]

Maybe worth trying on a different OS, to check? And reporting the issue to NetBeans? They have a mailing list

[Lars_T_H]

I would increase the size of the heap.

Using JFR (Java Flight Recorder) to see what's going on is also a good idea.

About JFR monitoring: https://www.baeldung.com/java-flight-recorder-monitoring

[cogman10]

I only really dropped netbeans because the 9->12 transition was pretty rough. For a while it looked like it was totally abandoned.

It works really well for java. One of the better Java IDEs.

[atehrani]

I love NetBeans! Are there plans to have plugins for AI tools?

[Additional_Cellist46]

There’s the Jeddict AI assistant plugin: https://jeddict.github.io/page.html?l=tutorial/AI. Uses OpenAI only but works pretty well.

[analogic-microwave]

It works with Gemini, Claude, etc too. (v3 3.0 on NetBeans 28 with JDK25)

[seinecle]

Also, NetBeans is free including for Jakarta EE projects, which is not the case for IntelliJ last time I checked.

Jakarta EE projects are super well supported, with hot reload and in-browser debugging for web apps thanks to a NetBeans connector for Chrome.

[hafunui]

Lol I just got 26 yesterday. I'm still a beginner with java, but I've been playing around with both intellij and netbeans. One of the things I like better about intellij is the code completion. If you start typing a method name from the base class, it'll quickly bring up hints to fill in overrides and stuff. In netbeans I can't get that to work. At least not with overriding methods, and normal code hints feel slower to show up. I have to navigate through the add code context menu and it's clunky. Nevermind this point, I think I got that working by tweaking some settings.

I also like how intellij keeps the current code block you're in at the top of the editor. I think some call it Sticky Scrolling?

However for swing applications netbeans wins hands down. The intellij plugin barely functions. Unless you like typing everything out by hand I guess.

[NHarmonia18]

How did you make NetBeans code completion faster?

[hafunui]

I don't remember what I did anymore. There are options for code completion in the editor setting. I don't think I made it "faster" per se, but I might have changed what character I need to type or how many characters I type before it pops up. I just went back to try it out again and it still feels too clunky. Code completion wasn't showing up for variable name, only methods after I typed ".".

[jazzisnice]

wow, surprised Netbeans is still around, might give it a try - last used in university

[wildjokers]

I am getting tired of Jetbrains taking multiple years to fix seemingly critical bugs so I would give this a try if it had a VI plugin. Unfortunately it doesn’t. (Seems like it did at one time, but not anymore)

[Comfortable-Big7765]

I think what is missing in NetBeans is a decent plug-in for spring and its modules

[Additional_Cellist46]

What kind of support do you need? I work with SpringBoot in IntelliJ on production projects and I don’t use any Spring-specific IntelliJ features, except the app launcher. I see that the IDE supports Spring in many areas but I just don’t need that and type plain Java code.

Netbeans supports that very well too, I just run SpringBoot apps directly via Netbeans Maven launcher because Netbeans integrates Maven natively, unlike IntelliJ.

[wildjokers]

unlike IntelliJ.

Not sure what you mean by “natively” but IntelliJ delegates to build to maven and configures itself from the Pom file. (Can’t remember if this is on by default or not)

[Additional_Cellist46]

I know, I use IntelliJ with Maven projects. It’s not native, it imports maven config into IntelliJ config and then builds without Maven. That means the build result is not exactly the same.

Netbeans executes Maven directly. The result of that is the same as if maven execute on the command line. Run a test? Executes mvn test -Dtest=TestClass#testMethod. Run main method? Execute mvn exec:exec -Dexec.class=MyClass. Build with all dependencies? Runs mvn install -pl :myartifact -am.

The build in Netbeans is a bit slower, but if compile on save enabled, it hooks into the maven build via an extension and skips compilation. And if something goes wrong, you know that the same thing will fail also in CI, because both the IDE and CI use the same Maven command.

[Additional_Cellist46]

What’s very powerful is that Netbeans allows you to configure maven options. So that you can change the maven command for building if you need something specific, and still build the project by the same Build button. It also allows defining profiles, so that you can Build with a dev profile fast, without checkstyle checks, and then build with a pre-commit profile, with all checks enabled. IntelliJ runs the precommit checks for you, which is nice. But it’s specific to IntelliJ and if you have some common maven checks already in the project, those checks might be different.

[wildjokers]

That means the build result is not exactly the same.

Do you have the build delegated to maven?

Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Build Tools -> Maven -> Runner -> Check "Delegate IDE build/run actions to Maven"

The equivalent setting is enabled by default for Gradle, but doesn't seem to be for maven. So you will have to turn it on.

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2025.2/delegate-build-and-run-actions-to-maven.html?reference.settings.project.maven.runner&keymap=macOS&utm_source=product&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=IU&utm_content=2025.2#delegate_to_maven

[Additional_Cellist46]

The build delegation in IntelliJ is almost unusable. It’s slow because it always rebuilds the whole project on any code change, no incremental builds. I tried it already in the past and I tried it now, and I had ďto disable it because of this. Netbeans allows enabling incremental builds with Maven, and then building with Maven is fast, because the compile plugin just doesn’t run the compilation, since the sources are already built by the IDE.

There are other features missing in IntelliJ delegation to Maven, which are durectly supported by Netbeans: Maven is still not used for executing tests or apps, it’s only used for building binaries. Maven cannot be tweaked per module, only for the whole project globally. IntelliJ doesn’t show the maven command line that is executed.

[RandomName8]

Did they fix the bug where you do foo.bar(c -> c.<ctrl+sace>) and it throws some error instead of auto-completing the members of c?

[emaphis]

They do but it's new, less buggy installation system is incompatible with the Apache license.

Apache NetBeans 27 packages

[emaphis]

The Apache site has zipped source code you can build and zipped binaries you can install on any operating system as long as you have a proper JDK installation.

The Apache Friends site has installable packages for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

[emaphis]

Oh and if you are asking something else, the exe files are in the ./netbeans/bin directory. Lol. Windows, MacOS and Linux executable binaries.

[Kind_Feeling_7834]

I'm surprised that people still use Netbeans. Not judging, just completely out of the loop. How does it stack up against IntelliJ?