Chapter 18. Using NetBeans Developer Collaboration Tools

• Getting the NetBeans Developer Collaboration Tools

• Configuring NetBeans IDE for Developer Collaboration

• Creating a Collaboration Account

• Managing Collaboration Accounts

• Logging into a Collaboration Server

• Collaborating and Interacting with Developers

MANY SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS WORK ON DISTRIBUTED DEVELOPMENT TEAMS. Developing software with distributed teams can be challenging since developer interactions are not as simple as walking down the hall to another developer's office. To help address some of these challenges, NetBeans IDE offers an optional set of Developer Collaboration tools. These tools are available as NetBeans plug-in modules and are available on the NetBeans IDE Update Center. The Developer Collaboration tools can greatly enhance the productivity of distributed software development teams by allowing developers to instant message and share their IDE projects with each other. The NetBeans Developer Collaboration tools are so advanced that you can grant a remote developer permission to view, edit, compile, and run your project source code all from within your IDE. You can share an IDE project by merely dragging and dropping the project or a selection of source files into a shared collaboration window. All developers participating in the collaborating session can see the same source files once they are shared. Any modifications made to the shared project are saved to the shared IDE project.

This chapter describes how to install the NetBeans Developer Collaboration modules and how to take advantage of those modules to increase productivity when working with remote team members.