A new version of Netbeans just came out. Is there anything I can do to avoid having to manually hunt down my plugins again?

Question

6.7 is out, and although going to the web and finding some .nbm-s and copying over a few update center URL-s isn't the biggest chore...it's still a chore.

Any tips for this? Is there maybe a hidden directory somewhere that I can just copy into the new 6.7 install?

Edit: for people like me who use both, I've asked this question in Eclipse-land as well: A new version of Eclipse just came out. Is there anything I can do to avoid having to manually hunt down my plugins again?

Subulate

Answer 1

Netbeans 6.7 does has this feature: Importing Plugins From Previous Release Into The New One, but it seems a bit shy about it.

When the new version of Netbeans is launched you'll be asked if you want to import settings from a previous version.

Click yes and Netbeans will look for compatible plugins in the background.

Note that you won't be prompted again. Instead, after a few minutes, an icon should appear in the bottom-right corner:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_BEizchvf9zs/Sk83UjMwZBI/AAAAAAAAABQ/hlX5DT-k0fg/s800/netbeans-screenshot.png

Not exactly in your face, right?

Click on that and you'll get the option of installing any compatible plugins.

Also note that if you exit this process at any point then the icon will disappear - restarting Netbeans will bring it back (though you might have to wait for it to do another background scan).

Finally, you can also trigger this process (and choose an arbitrary userdir location to import from) with the command line option -J-Dplugin.manager.import.from=/path/to/userdir

e.g. in Vista:

C:\Users\JDoe>"c:\Program Files (x86)\NetBeans 6.7\bin\netbeans" -J-Dplugin.manager.import.from="C:\Users\JDoe\.netbeans\6.5"

or in Ubuntu:

/bin/sh ~/netbeans-6.7/bin/netbeans -J-Dplugin.manager.import.from="/homes/YOURHOMEDIR/.netbeans/6.5"

This might be useful if you want to import from a beta install.

Erythro

Answer 2

If only there was a plugin collector plugin like Firefox in Netbeans :P

Wilda

Answer 3

In the 'modules' sub-directory of the < install_dir >/< nb version >/, you will see the JARs of the modules you installed. But, there is no metadata information apparently there. And, I don't think only copying the JARs will help. Even if it does, couple of things: you will not be able to update the modules, when there are recent versions available and the old modules may simply not be compatible with the new release.

So, the best thing, even though repeated work, is to install them from the Plugin manager.

PS: You may consider asking this on the 'nbusers' mailing list.

Giles