• differentiate between test-libs and other libs
• work with ejb- and ear-projects
• attach sources and javadocs if available in local maven repository

We call this plugin in every clean in NetBeans’s build.xml:

    <target name="-post-clean">
        <exec executable="mvn.bat" dir="${basedir}" osfamily="windows">
            <arg value="clean"/>
            <arg value="eclipse:eclipse"/>
            <arg value="eclipse:clean"/>
            <arg value="antprops:nbjavaee"/>
            <arg value="-DdownloadSources=true"/>
            <arg value="-DdownloadJavadocs=true"/>
        </exec>
        <exec executable="mvn" dir="${basedir}" osfamily="mac">
            <arg value="clean"/>
            <arg value="eclipse:eclipse"/>
            <arg value="eclipse:clean"/>
            <arg value="antprops:nbjavaee"/>
            <arg value="-DdownloadSources=true"/>
            <arg value="-DdownloadJavadocs=true"/>
        </exec>
    </target>

We abuse the maven-eclipse-plugin to download the sources and javadocs for all our dependencies All sources and javadocs found in the local maven repository are automatically attached to the libraries in NetBeans. This is really helpfull for debugging and code-completion.

Another improvement is the ability to do glassfish-dirctory-deployment of EARs out of NetBeans. For this you need to add an additional target to the build.xml:

    <target name="pre-run-deploy">
        <unzip dest="${build.dir}" src="${dist.jar}">
            <patternset includes="${ee.archives}"/>
        </unzip>
        <mkdir dir="${build.generated.dir}/tmp"/>
        <!--touch file="${build.generated.dir}/unzipee.txt"/-->
        <echo file="${build.generated.dir}/tmp/UnzipEE.java"><![CDATA[
            package tmp;

            import java.io.File;
            import java.util.Iterator;
            import org.apache.tools.ant.BuildException;
            import org.apache.tools.ant.Task;
            import org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Expand;
            import org.apache.tools.ant.types.FileSet;
            import org.apache.tools.ant.types.Resource;
            import org.apache.tools.ant.types.resources.FileResource;

            public class UnzipEE extends Task {

                private FileSet fileSet;

                public void add(FileSet fileSet) {
                    this.fileSet = fileSet;
                }

                public void execute() throws BuildException {
                    for(Iterator it = fileSet.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
                        Resource resource = (Resource) it.next();
                        if(resource.isExists() && (resource instanceof FileResource)) {
                            File file = ((FileResource) resource).getFile();
                            String name = file.getName();
                            String dest = name.replaceAll("\\.jar", "_jar").replaceAll("\\.war", "_war");
                            Expand expand = new Expand();
                            expand.setProject(getProject());
                            expand.setSrc(file);
                            expand.setDest(new File(file.getParentFile(), dest));
                            expand.execute();
                        }
                    }
                }

            }
        ]]>
        </echo>
        <javac debug="true" srcdir="${build.generated.dir}" destdir="${build.generated.dir}"/>
        <taskdef name="unzipee" classname="tmp.UnzipEE" classpath="${build.generated.dir}"/>
        <unzipee>
            <fileset dir="${build.dir}" includes="${ee.archives}"/>
        </unzipee>
        <delete dir="${build.dir}" includes="${ee.archives}"/>
        <delete includeemptydirs="true">
            <fileset dir="${build.dir}" includes="**/.svn" defaultexcludes="false"/>
        </delete>
        <delete dir="${build.generated.dir}/tmp"/>
    </target>

This looks really weird, but is necessary if you want to reference some projects directly and use compile on save. You have to extract all ejb-jars and wars manually into the folder dist/gfdeploy. For this reason the updated plugin generates the property “ee.archives”, which is a space separated list of all dependencies of type “ejb” or “war”. If you want to reference a web-project directly, instead of a war, you have to remove the war-dependency and add the project instead.

The patch for Peter’s plugin can be found here: SourceForge.net: JTrac: Detail: 2667507