The NetBeans mobility pack includes a cute drag-and-drop Java ME application builder. Since day one I've been asking: does it run on a Mac yet? Does it run on a Mac yet? Does it run on a Mac yet?...and the answer has been "no". Running it across the network via X11 or similar, or running inside a Windows emulator, isn't ideal so I've more-or-less avoided NetBeans.
However, blogs from Lukas Hasik and Florian Beer pointed out that you can hack the mobility downloads to make it run on Mac OS X, so I took the plunge with it under NetBeans 5.5 beta with the enterprise pack. And sure, it works:
A couple of differences from the blog instructions: I didn't add a JDK class set to my path when setting up the platform, I added the MIDP API zip (because you don't want to try to use JDK 1.5 code on a handset just yet). Oddly, the Hello World Midlet that NetBeans generated was broken, and I've seen a few
I'm not overly enamoured with the code generation, but perhaps I'll grow to love that as I customize it. The nice thing is about the mobility pack is the easy-to-use "press the run button to compile, preverify and run the application". Behind the scenes it's running ant, which is what I do anyway, but somehow just having the button to press to do it for all you makes a difference.
Looking ahead to Mobility Pack 6 there's at least the possibility that when the mobility pack is open sourced we'll get a ZIP distribution, but probably not full support for Mac OS X. If this is an issue you care about, take a moment to register at Netbeans.org and then cast a vote for issue 53076. Take care with the voting, because it's not just a matter of clicking the "vote for this issue" link: after that, you need to scroll down, enter a number in the text field opposite the 53076 entry, then scroll some more and click submit.
UPDATE 2006-11-16: For the Netbeans 5.5 final release I also had to edit
However, blogs from Lukas Hasik and Florian Beer pointed out that you can hack the mobility downloads to make it run on Mac OS X, so I took the plunge with it under NetBeans 5.5 beta with the enterprise pack. And sure, it works:
A couple of differences from the blog instructions: I didn't add a JDK class set to my path when setting up the platform, I added the MIDP API zip (because you don't want to try to use JDK 1.5 code on a handset just yet). Oddly, the Hello World Midlet that NetBeans generated was broken, and I've seen a few
IndexOutOfBounds exceptions using the IDE, but I'm using beta software, so that's fair enough.I'm not overly enamoured with the code generation, but perhaps I'll grow to love that as I customize it. The nice thing is about the mobility pack is the easy-to-use "press the run button to compile, preverify and run the application". Behind the scenes it's running ant, which is what I do anyway, but somehow just having the button to press to do it for all you makes a difference.
Looking ahead to Mobility Pack 6 there's at least the possibility that when the mobility pack is open sourced we'll get a ZIP distribution, but probably not full support for Mac OS X. If this is an issue you care about, take a moment to register at Netbeans.org and then cast a vote for issue 53076. Take care with the voting, because it's not just a matter of clicking the "vote for this issue" link: after that, you need to scroll down, enter a number in the text field opposite the 53076 entry, then scroll some more and click submit.
UPDATE 2006-11-16: For the Netbeans 5.5 final release I also had to edit
NetBeans.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.clusters and add mobility7.3 to the end of the list.
