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Tip 16: Navigate to Compile Errors

Sometimes you just want to see the big picture: Will this class compile or not? If not, where does

the bug start? Did I place the debugger breakpoint before or after that spot?

You can gather this type of information with one glance from the error stripe—even before you

have actually compiled the class. The error stripe is the area on the right side of the editor. It repre-

sents the whole file and also marks the current caret position ( ). Additional marks represent lines

with warnings (orange), errors (red), debugger breakpoints (pink), editor bookmarks (gray), and

highlighted occurrences (tan); see Figure 12.

The colored box at the top of the error stripe tells you immediately whether this class will compile

without warnings (green box), compile with warnings (orange box), or not compile at all (red

box). If the box is red, there will be red error marks in the error stripe. Clicking any mark will take

you directly to the appropriate line so that you can fix it.

When you run the project or compile classes, any compiler errors and warnings are displayed in

the Output window. Open the Output window by pressing Ctrl-4 (Mac: Command-4). Click into

the Output window and use the arrow keys to move the caret from one error to another: If the file

that contains the error is open, the Source Editor scrolls to the line containing the error. Instead of

using the arrow keys, you can also press F12 and Shift-F12 to jump to the next and previous error

in the file. The Output window renders lines with errors as hypertext links: Clicking a link will

also take you directly to the faulty line.

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Tip Source

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/roumen/editor_hidden.html

Tip 17: Navigate to Pending Tasks

Many programmers share the habit of marking buggy lines of code with a comment saying FIXME

or TODO. You too? Then try this: Go to the Window menu and select Task List. The Task List

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100 NetBeans

™ IDE Tips & Tricks

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FIGURE 12:

Colored marks,

warnings, and

errors in the error

stripe

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window opens and lists (among other things) all lines that you marked as TODO or FIXME.

Double-click the entry to jump to the line with the pending task (see Figure 13).

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100 NetBeans

™ IDE Tips & Tricks

by Ruth Kusterer

FIGURE 13:

Task List window

Use the Show Tasks buttons to limit the search to one file, to extend it to all open projects, or to

include all dependent projects. If the list is very long, use the Filter button to constrain the list by type

or by custom keywords. Use the Toggle button at the bottom to Group Tasks by Category or to Display

Tasks as List. Right-click the list and choose Refresh from the context menu to update the view.

The Task List is a quick and intuitive way to keep track of current coding tasks. To make sure

special Task List features for Java are enabled, choose Tools > Options and select the Java

Code > Tasklist category. Check the box to enable detection of Java compiler errors and

@todo annotations.

To customize the list of keywords the list should include, choose Tools > Options and select the

Miscellaneous > ToDo Tasks category (see Figure14).

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Tip Source

http://blogs.sun.com/roumen/entry/task_management_in_netbeans

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100 NetBeans

™ IDE Tips & Tricks

by Ruth Kusterer

FIGURE 14:

ToDo Tasks Options

window

Tip 18: Open a File in the Editor from the Command Line

Use the --open path:line command-line switch to open the specified file in the IDE’s Source Editor.

Specifying the line is optional. The following example opens the file

MarsRoverViewerApp.java

positions the caret in line 10: