Question

I think my question is easy. However it is surprising that I couldn’t find any easy solution.

I’m developing an open source Java library project on Netbeans and like many others I want to release it as binary.jar, source.jar and javadoc.jar.

Is there a way to generate them automatically on Netbeans? I know maven can do it. But the learning curve seems too long.

There is a similar question but the only answer didn’t work: Automatically generating source and doc jars in Netbeans

Answer 1

Here is the solution I came up with at the end. It uses Ant and generates javadoc and source jar. Then it archives binary jar, javadoc, source.jar, licence and readme file in to a zip file that is ready to release.

 <target name="-pre-init">
    <property file="version.properties"/>
    <property name="dist.jar" value="dist/${ant.project.name}-${project.version}.jar"/>
</target>

<target description="bundle sources in a jar" name="package-sources">
    <jar basedir="src" destfile="build/release/${ant.project.name}-${project.version}-sources.jar"/>
</target>


<target name="package_for_release" depends="jar,javadoc, package-sources">
    <mkdir dir="build/release"/>
    <copy file="${dist.jar}" todir="build/release/"/>
    <copy file="licence.txt" todir="build/release/"/>
    <copy file="beni_oku.txt" todir="build/release/"/>
    <mkdir dir="build/release/doc"/>
    <copy todir="build/release/doc">
        <fileset dir="dist/javadoc" includes="**"/>
    </copy>

    <zip basedir="build/release/" includes="**" destfile="dist/${ant.project.name}-${project.version}.zip"/>
</target>

Open build.xml in NetBeans than right click – > run target -> [other targets] -> package_for_release

Script gets the version number from a properties file. I got this solution from here.