Apache NetBeans 9.0 - How to Build & Run the Latest

In my last post, I spoke about how to obtain the Release Candidate of Apache NetBeans 9.0.  There have been some changes made since the Release Candidate (including the addition of a very nice updated splash screen), so in this post I will cover how to build and run the latest sources.  I really is quite simple to run the latest code...here's how:

1)  Clone the latest source code from the GitHub repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans.git

2)  Open your terminal and traverse inside of the cloned directory named "incubator-netbeans"

3)  Build the IDE using Apache Ant.  If you do not have it installed, please download from here: https://ant.apache.org/

To build, simply issue the "ant" command from within the "incubator-netbeans" directory.

4)  The build process will take several minutes, as it obtains all of the dependencies and performs the compilation process.  Once completed, open the incubator-netbeans/nbbuild directory, and you should see a directory entitled "netbeans".  Inside this directory are all of the files required to run the Apache NetBeans IDE.  You can run the IDE by invoking the incubator-netbeans/nbbuild/netbeans/bin/netbeans executable.

Once the executable is started, you will be presented with the new Apache NetBeans 9.0 splash screen, and you can then begin to use the latest build.