Netbeans 6.7RC1

I've been playing around with the new Netbeans 6.7 RC1, and the added features make me want to squeal like a little girl. I've been on the Netbeans Mailing List, on the newsletter, and connected to some folks at Sun who work on related projects - and I had no idea that 6.7 would have some of these awesome features. I've come to the conclusion that Sun doesn't have a great hype machine or evangelism. If they can keep cranking out releases like this (and more often please), I'll be glad to become a cog in their propaganda machinery.

In a past life, I worked with .NET. One thing Microsoft did was they supported their users from cradle to grave. From the first line of code to production, everything was handled by a Microsoft product that integrated nicely. Your code was written in Visual Studio. Your database was SQL Server which hooked into Visual Studio. Your code was checked into the Team Foundation Server. Your app was deployed to IIS. It all worked nicely, and .NET developers have a hard time leaving the environment because they have to learn how to slap together a development pipeline as if it were a Rube Goldberg machine. Granted, if Microsoft ever provided something that wasn't working for you, swapping out solutions ranged from prohibitively painful/expensive to impossible. Despite that flaw, we, as non-.NET developers, should envy .NET developers. All-in-one solutions should be desired.

I get the feeling that Sun is taking us to the dream-land that is an all-in-one solution with the ability to swap parts out of your development pipeline and still have a working and productive system. As a Ruby developer using the new Sun toys, you can write your code in Netbeans, check it into Kenai (using a variety of source control mechanisms), and deploy to Glassfish. You can even take a look at issues on Kenai with Netbeans' new issue tracker integration. Going this route doesn't produce the same problem that Microsoft developers have one the One Microsoft Way for one reason or another doesn't cut it. There are lots of deployment solutions for your web apps, Glassfish is simply one that integrates nicely with this suite of tools. You can always check your code into any old Git repo. Rails was spawned from a project management site if you're looking for project management other than Kenai.

I'll try to post updates as I check out some of the new features in Netbeans. I've already filed two bugs in the two days I've had it installed, but that's not because 6.7RC1 is super buggy. I just want to make sure these features get the polish they deserve.