NetBeans 6.8 is out
NetBeans 6.8 is finally out everyone! Yes, the IDE I use both at home and at work has reached another milestone in its quest to be one of the best IDEs around, but you would be mistaken for missing it entirely.
This version hasn’t had much fanfare and there are no amazingly awe-inspiring new features in there. Sure, if you are in the Java world there are probably some new exciting things relating to more recent Java technologies (I really don’t know much about their ecosystem) but my focus is on all the other languages, frameworks and tools they began to support in the last few years.
As most of my work is web-related, some of the new PHP stuff got me interested. Full PHP 5.3 support is the big one, but Symfony support has also snuck into this version. However, it turned out to be a let down. Apart from these features, there is very little else on offer.
I use a variety of frameworks, and while Symfony has (apparently) great support in 6.8, Zend Framework, Kohana, CodeIgniter and every other framework you could care to mention has been ignored. They do have some plans to try to create a wider, more extensible base for framework support to be ‘bolted on’ but don’t hold your breath. I do believe unit testing support has been improved, but I tend to operate that side of my process from the good old command line.
JavaScript support has improved noticeably in recent versions, along with remote deployment and database support, but some elemental things are still missing. Git source control support STILL has to be added as a 3rd party module (come on guys, it isn’t some weird tech – Linux is hosting in a Git repo), project source browsing leaves a bit to be desired and PHP still feels like a second-class citizen in the NetBeans world.
Still, lets hope 6.9 is a bit better!
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