Netbeans 8.1 on the EEEPC 900

It's quite recent in the news that Netbeans, the Oracle Java IDE, is going to pass under the Apache wing. The immediate effect of this news has been to remind me to upgrade my EEEPC Netbeans installation.

Installation and first run

Netbeans for Linux is provided in the form of an auto-installing executable script, once downloaded I started it from shell:

chmod +x netbeans-8.1-javase-linux.sh
sudo ./netbeans-8.1-javase-linux.sh

when started with the “sudo” command the installation script install Netbeans into the “/usr/local” directory otherwise the script will install in your home directory.

The quest for new languages: Python

It happens, sometimes, that I download a “new” programming language or a framework or library in order to give it a try. Of course the word “new” is relative to my personal or professional experience, mostly orbiting around the Java galaxy. This time the “new” programming language is Python. Python is, of course, a widely used and far from being a new programming language but I never had the thought of giving it a try before.

Python on Eclipse: PyDev

I'm willing to learn new languages but I'm not so eager to install and use a new IDE while doing it. I so went looking for a Python development Eclipse plug-in and the choice fell on PyDev. Installing PyDev on Eclipse has been quite simple, just matter of selecting it on Eclipse Market Place and completing the installation wizard.

Before creating the first project PyDev plug-in needs to know where python interpreter is. There is a handy automatic search feature but I preferred the manual configuration in order to have more meaningful configuration names.

The quest for new languages: Scala

As a programmer I try to keep track of the new tools are continuously made available to my work. It's a hard task, almost impossible, since every day new languages, framework or libraries are proposed on the Internet. I usually follow a conservative strategy by leaving novelties to “grown up” a little in order to see it they are more or less widely used.

I've been recently reading this article, among the many languages and technologies cited one particularly awakened my interest: Scala.

Why Scala?

Three things about Scala caught at my attention: first it runs on a standard Java virtual machine this means an easier integration with the programming ecosystem I'm mostly used to work with. Then I learned that Scala implements the functional programming paradigm. I really know little about functional programming but the idea of learning a new programming paradigm really enticed me. Last, but not least, Scala is nowadays widely used in big and complex software projects like Twitter or LinkedIn.

Scala on Eclipse (Luna)

A good Eclipse plug-in is available for Scala named Scala IDE for Eclipse. I fist tried downloading the one available at Eclipse Marketplace but I soon discovered it didn't work with Eclipse Luna. After some searching in the Internet I discovered the only working version for Eclipse Luna is version 4.0 release candidate 2. Installing the plug-in has been only matter of copying the update address into Eclipse “Install new software” window, agreeing to licenses and following instructions.

Java JDK 8 and Netbeans 8 on the EEEPC

With the recent release of the long awaited Java 8 Oracle also released the latest version of its development environment Netbeans. JDK8 and Netbeans have been made available as single updates or together in a bundled package. Since I wasn't fully satisfied from my recent upgrade to Netbeans 7.4 I was more than willing to upgrade.

Installation

The bundled package is in the form of the usual self-executable file Oracle provides to distribute Netbeans installations, let me say the installation process couldn't be easier.

I executed the installation file from shell …

chmod +x jdk-8-nb-8-linux-i586.sh

sudo ./jdk-8-nb-8-linux-i586.sh

the installation wizard started

Netbeans 7.4 on the EEEPC 900

It has been a while since last time I wrote about Netbeans installation on the EEEPC 900. I usually use Eclipse as my preferred Java IDE, both at work and at home, but on the nine inch EEEPC display Eclipse has too many parts falling off-screen. I so started using Netbeans on the EEEPC and, as the time passed, I learned appreciating it.

Installation

Installing Netbeans on Linux is quite simple: I downloaded the installation script made it executable and started it like following:

chmod +x netbeans-7.4-javase-linux.sh
sudo ./netbeans-7.4-javase-linux.sh

Then I just followed the wizard instructions:

Mercurial and Mercurial-server : playing with DVCS (part 2)

In my previous post I moved my first steps with Mercurial DVCS, now I'll install a Mercurial server implementation and configure both my computers to access it using SSH protocol.

Mercurial-server

With DVCS you don't have to use a central server, repositories could be shared over LAN using shared folders, but this doesn't mean you can't have one. Various mercurial server side implementations exists, using different protocols. May be I'm too server-client minded but I didn't feel satisfied by just sharing repositories over a shared folder so I decided to install Mercurial-server.

Installing Mercurial-server is an easy task the command

sudo apt-get install mercurial-server

complete the installation process and the creation of the application user (hg). A bit more complex is configuring SSH for accessing the server, I mainly followed instructions from here and from Mercurial-server documentation.

Mercurial-server uses public-key authentication and SSH-Agent in order to grant access to its clients, so the first step has been to generate a keys couple for SSH. The ssh-keygen command does this interactively.

maxx@VeritonS661:~$ ssh-keygen -t dsa

Generating public/private dsa key pair.

Enter file in which to save the key (/home/maxx/.ssh/id_dsa):

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

Enter same passphrase again:

Your identification has been saved in /home/maxx/.ssh/id_dsa.

Your public key has been saved in /home/maxx/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.

I then copied the public key in mercurial-server keys configuration path and told mercurial-server to refresh its authentication files, using the following commands:

ssh-add -L > maxx.key

sudo mkdir /etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/maxx

sudo cp maxx.key /etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/maxx /veritons661

sudo -u hg /usr/share/mercurial-server/refresh-auth

the usual path for mercurial-server keys is (for root users)

/etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/<user-name>

but if the same user must be accessed from different machines a different path is used:

/etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/<user-name>/<machine-name>

since I was going to add the maxx user from the EEEPC too I had to use, of course, the second from. On the EEEPC side I generated SSH keys at the same manner then, after logging to the desktop computer (the server) with:

ssh -A veritons661

and I eventually registered EEEPC's maxx user like this

ssh-add -L > eeepc900.key

sudo cp eeepc900.key /etc/mercurial-server/keys/root/maxx/eeepc900

sudo -u hg /usr/share/mercurial-server/refresh-auth

Mercurial and Mercurial-server : playing with DVCS (part 1)

Version control systems (VCS) are an indispensable tool when programming and sharing code even for small groups. Even while programming alone, but on different computers, a version control system could easily prove useful for securely sharing code between desktop and laptop computer. I use daily SVN, as version control while at work. For my homely experiments, instead, I decided to install something different: Mercurial, a distributed version control system (DVCS). Distributed version control systems, most famous are Git and Mercurial, do not rely on a central server to keep the code repository, in DVCS every developing computer keeps its own copy of the repository. What interested me in DVCS was the capability to do version control also when off-line and also, of course, the chance to learn something new.

Installing Mercurial (command-line and plugged-in)

Installing Mercurial command-line version it's quite trivial:

sudo apt-get install mercurial

Both Eclipse and Netbeans offers their plug-ins to interface with Mercurial. Netbeans plug-in is already provided with version 7.3.1 I have installed on the EEEPC. On Eclipse, desktop-side, installing the MercurialEclipse plug-in has been as simple as selecting it from the Eclipse Marketplace and following installation wizard.

Slick2D on Netbeans (and the EEEPC)

This post is sort of a corollary at my previous post: after trying Slick2D on my desktop computer, and Eclipse, I decided to port the demo projects to Netbeans, on the EEEPC, where I do many of my programming experiments.

The use Slick2D with Netbeans is covered, in the site wiki, as well as the Eclipse case. The first step is creating a Java application project

once the project has been created Slick2D and LWJGL Java libraries must be added to the project class-path. This can be done by selecting one-by-one the needed JAR files but, if you're going to make more than one project setting-up a custom library will be handier.

So I, from the project properties, I selected the libraries folder then the “Add Library ...” button.

Android Development on Netbeans (and the EEEPC)

In my previous post I moved my first steps in Android development world by installing Android SDK and Eclipse IDE on my desktop computer. After successfully writing my first Android hello-world I went, almost immediately, on how to do Android development on the EEEPC 900. If it's true the desktop computer is much more suited for writing code it's the EEEPC tho one I always bring with me and I use for my experiments.

I'm a big fan of Eclipse and I use it everyday at work but, when it comes using it on a netbook, it performs very poorly. Worst of all some Eclipse configuration windows are too big to fit into the small EEEPC screen and even lack of scroll-bars. This is why I use Netbeans on the EEEPC. After a brief looking-up on the 'net I came to NBAnroid plug-in page.

Installing Netbeans to 7.2

Even if it isn't required I decided to upgrade my Netbeans installation to the latest 7.2 version. I so removed previous version by launching Netbeans removal script

sudo /usr/local/netbeans-7.1.2/uninstall.sh

then I downloaded latest Netbeans version from its download page and launched the auto-installing script

chmod +x netbeans-7.2-ml-javase-linux.sh

sudo ./netbeans-7.2-ml-javase-linux.sh

this started the usual Netbeans installation wizard 

after some “I agree” and several “Next” I got the new version installed.

Installing Android SDK

Like in my previous post I downloaded Android SDK from Google's page and extracted it on my home folder

mkdir android

mv Downloads/android-sdk_r20.0.3-linux.tgz android/
cd android/
tar -xf android-sdk_r20.0.3-linux.tgz

EEEBuntu: Restoring the Java development environment

After installing the operating system the second step in building up my EEEBuntu netbook is preparing a Java development environment by installing Java JDK, Netbeans and Apache Tomcat.
Java JDK installation:
EEEbuntu comes with  OpenJDK already installed, but I prefer having also Sun JDK installed. Java developer kit installation is done by terminal using apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

then Sun jdk is selected as default jdk by typing the command:

sudo update-java-alternatives --set java-6-sun