The Apache NetBeans team has released version 29 of this popular cross-platform IDE. This update extends Gradle’s capabilities by enabling classes from specific source sets to run within Gradle actions, addressing a long-standing workflow limitation.
Moreover, NetBeans 29 now includes Maven 3.9.12, resolves internal deprecations, and addresses several stability issues. Key fixes include correcting an UnsupportedOperationException in the RunGoalsPanel, unifying classpaths between the IDE and Ant builds for Maven projects, and preventing null pointer exceptions when certain POM properties are missing.
Continuous integration workflows for Maven now test early access builds of JDK 26. Ant support is improved with an upgrade to Apache Ant 1.10.15.
Java development benefits from improvements that include optimized performance for refactoring and find-usage operations, enhanced syntax highlighting for module imports and JFlex grammar files, and removal of legacy applet API usage and templates.
NetBeans 29 also updates the embedded Tomcat server to version 9.0.113 and upgrades the nb-javac compiler to a recent JDK 26 build, further modernizing the Java toolchain.
Web development tooling now supports CSS image-set includes and resolves parser errors for CSS pseudo-elements, improving authoring for modern web standards. JavaScript support is enhanced by detecting duplicate private class elements and invalid constructors during parsing.
Groovy support is updated to version 3.0.25. PHP development receives targeted improvements, including code folding for heredoc and nowdoc syntax, and a fix for an infinite loop caused by the PHP brace matcher in embedded lexer contexts.
Enterprise workflows benefit from improved database connection dialogs, making configuration easier for SQLite, DuckDB, BigQuery, and Snowflake. JSP 3.0 (Jakarta) source parsing is now supported, and a new “Edit context.xml” action is available in the Tomcat menu.
Version control integration includes an updated DefaultGitHyperlinkProvider with support for Codeberg projects, an updated JGit library, and improved handling of ambiguous ID input in the checkout dialog. Plus, fixes to the ordering of the Git file history log improve the reliability of repository exploration.
Finally, the platform layer receives several maintenance updates, including improved handling of deprecated APIs, enhanced logging for persistence manager deserialization, and alignment of the master filesystem with Valhalla compatibility. Deprecated features such as Mylyn integration and legacy progress utilities have been removed.
For more information, see the changelog. Apache NetBeans 29 is now available for download from the project website.
