Skeletal Project Template

This project creates an empty but fully configured freeform project with most of the same capabilities as a regular Java project. For example, you can compile and run the project or individual classes with a main method, compile and run JUnit tests individually or together, build Javadoc, debug the project or JUnit tests (including Run > Apply Code Changes!), and run the NetBeans Profiler on your code. In addition, you can add this project as a subproject of any regular Java project and have everything work as expected.

Unlike a regular Java project, the Properties dialog is the same as for any freeform project, i.e. it only describes how the project works. If you wish to customize the behavior of any targets, you may simply edit the Ant scripts, or edit configuration in build.properties. There is not currently any way to get a Properties dialog that works like that for a regular Java project:

This template is also a great way to understand how to make customizations to your own existing freeform project to support various actions. To explore the implementation, look in project.xml for IDE bindings; build.properties for configuration; build.xml for basic targets; file-targets.xml for targets which apply to a specific file selection rather than the whole project; and netbeans-targets.xml for special targets which can only be run inside the NetBeans IDE and serve to integrate Ant functionality with the rest of the IDE.