These pages outline the basic orientation and structure of projects
hosted on netbeans.org. Some of these projects are actively maintained
and contributing to the main NetBeans IDE product. These projects can
be categorized by their target clusters (directories in the IDE
installation structure):
These are described below.
Besides these, there are a large set of other projects. Some of these initiatives target specific aspects of the product which affect it as a whole: quality, performance, UI or accessibility. There are also active projects that are in progress for the next generation of NetBeans and other prospective projects that are currently in the early stages of development. The projects are organized hierarchically, so each project can consist of several sub-projects.
The NetBeans platform is a powerful modular framework used for building powerful modular applications (see NetBeans' Partners page for examples). The platform project provides a language-neutral framework, which can be used as a basis for any rich desktop application development. The Platform includes the NetBeans APIs and their default implementations (Core), Core Libraries, AutoUpdate and Java Help support.
More about the Platform cluster
The ide cluster targets the development of a basic, user friendly,
extensible Java IDE (built on top of the Platform). This includes a
powerful project system based on Apache Ant, Java language support,
Java editor support, debugger, GUI designer, VCS integration, XML and
properties files
support and tools such as tasklist, image viewer, etc.
This cluster extends the NetBeans IDE with support for development
of modern Web and J2EE applications and web services.
More about the Enterprise Cluster
Projects which are not directly related to the current NetBeans Platform or IDE development. These projects can be categorized as follows:
| Project name | Description |
| Active universal projects | Projects targeted at specific aspects of the product (for example: QA, UI, A11Y, Performance, etc.) |
| Test Tools | Tools for testing NetBeans and Java-based projects in general. |
| Active projects in progress | Active projects that are in progress for the next generation of NetBeans |
| Prospective projects | Prospective projects that are in the early development phase - anybody is welcome to join and help move them forward |
| Hibernated projects | Hibernated, abandoned or simply finished projects |
| NetBeans server infrastructure | NetBeans web site services infrastructure (pages generation scripts, ...) |