.Installing NetBeans For C++ Remote Development on A Raspberry Pi

THIS IS OUR PREFERRED WINDOWS DEVELOPMENT IDE FOR THE RASPBERRY PI
The reason – you program on your nice fast Windows PC but under the bonnet it copies the files and uses the RPi to actually compile the project which, whilst a bit slower than using a high spec PC, solves all the issues of platform architecture, installed libraries, etc.  Its a really nice well implemented and pretty damn painless solution!  Oh, and single stepping, run to breakpoint, etc, full on debugging just works – thank you NetBeans gods!

Installing NetBeans

At the time or writing installing Netbeans 11 has a few hoops to jump through – there’s no longer an installer and C/C++ support has to be added (it was all fine in netbeans 8 but since loosing Oracle support lots of changes are underway, hopefully will improve in future versions)

Download the latest NetBeans IDE from https://netbeans.apache.org/download/

There is no installer provided for the new apache version of netbeans (at the time of writing) so select the “binaries” version, save it somewhere. To run it double click the file “netbeans-install-directory\bin\netbeans64.exe”.

You will also need the Java SE Development Kit (JDK) (the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is not enough). Netbeans needs Jave SE / JDK to be installed in order to function.

Getting C/C++ support working

C/CC++ has been removed in netbeans 10.0 and 11.0 but is scheduled to be re-introduced in netbeans 12.00. Its down to a donation phase of work in the transition from Oracle. However it can easily be added into V10.0 and V11.0.

Menu > Tools > Plugins > Settings tab > Add button. Then on the Update Center Customizer screen:

  • Name: Enter something (e.g. “My added plugins”)
  • URL: http://updates.netbeans.org/netbeans/updates/8.2/uc/final/distribution/catalog.xml.gz

Click OK

You’ll now have a new entry in the “Configuration of Update Centers”. Ensure it is checked.

Now go to the “Available Plugins” tab and you will see “C/C++” has been added. Select it and press “Install”

NetBeans New Install Configuration

The following are options we like to use to make netbeans behave like other IDE’s we use and to correct things we find annoying.

Turning Off Expand Tabs To Spaces setting

Menu > Tools > Options > Editor > Formatting tab

Select ‘All Languages’ and Category ‘Tabs And Indents’

Turn off ‘Expand Tabs to Spaces’

Set ‘Tab Size’ to 4

Press ‘Apply’

Changing To Uppercase to SHIFT+CTRL+U

Menu > Tools > Options > Keymap > To Uppercase, then select Add Alternative

Menu > Tools > Options > Keymap > To Lowercase, then select Add Alternative

Making The Editor Work As Well As Possible

Tools > Options > Editor > General > Enable Camel Case Navigation = Off

Tools > Options > Editor > Code Completion > Insert Single Proposals Automatically = Off

Tools > Options > Editor > Code Completion > Insert Closing Brackets Automatically = Off

Tools > Options > Editor > Formatting > Language: (do for “C”, “C++” and “C/C++ Header”) >

Indents > # at Start Line = Off

Indents > Indent Case Statements = Off

Braces Placement = Set all to new line

Other > Add Leading Star In Comments = Off

Turning off the grey lines that are shown for intents: Main Menu > View > Show Indent Guide Lines > turn off

Stopping scroll wheel zoom issue

Change zoom in and out to

SHIFT + CTRL + Up Arrow/Down Arrow

Misc things

Tools > Options > Appearance > Show full file path

Creating A Project on The RPi

See here.

USEFUL?
We benefit hugely from resources on the web so we decided we should try and give back some of our knowledge and resources to the community by opening up many of our company’s internal notes and libraries through mini sites like this. We hope you find the site helpful.
Please feel free to comment if you can add help to this page or point out issues and solutions you have found, but please note that we do not provide support on this site. If you need help with a problem please use one of the many online forums.

Comments

  1. Reply
    Kurt.St

    10 months ago

    Hi @Adam,
    thanks for your answer.
    I found out that it works with version 21 as well. All you have to do is work with JDK11 and take unpack200.exe from the jdk11 directory.
    Regards
    Kurt

    1. Adam Article Author

      10 months ago

      Nice one thanks for the update. We tend to get it working then not update unless we have to, but will update the page next time we’ve a new computer to set up. They release new Netbeans updates fast….!

  2. Reply
    Kurt.St

    10 months ago

    Hi,thank you very much for this guide. Unfortunately, this is only for an earlier version (I couldn’t find out which one). Since as with many other applications, something is constantly changing, it is no longer comprehensible for me how to install and configure the current or a newer NetBean IDE. I would like to do remote development for a raspberry0. Netbeans should run on a Windows PC. Has anyone ever given NetBeans a run lately?

    1. Adam Article Author

      10 months ago

      Works fine for us with Netbeans 11.0

  3. Reply
    kootzie

    7 years ago

    does this apply to building software/modules on github ?

  4. Reply
    rich4321

    7 years ago

    I am a bit confused the whether both my Mac and my pi3 have to have netbeans C/C++ installed?Thanks

  5. Reply
    adriaan diedericks

    8 years ago

    Hi

    I tried to run NetBeans on RPI 3 B and got the following error:

    Configuring the installer…
    Searching for JVM on the system…
    Preparing bundled JVM …
    /tmp/.nbi-5064746.tmp/jre-8u101-linux-x64.bin: 1: /tmp/.nbi-5064746.tmp/jre-8u101-linux-x64.bin: Syntax error: “)” unexpected
    Cannot prepare bundled JVM to run the installer.
    Most probably the bundled JVM is not compatible with the current platform.
    See FAQ at http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqUnableToPrepareBundledJdk for more information.

    1. Jimmy Williamson

      7 years ago

      most distro’s for pie are 32 bit even if the processor is 64 bit. A 64 bit os would not help much on it as it only has 1 gig memory… try the 32 bit version

    2. adriaan diedericks

      7 years ago

      Thanks Jimmy.

      That is a eye opener for me…
      The programming domain is a bit new for me. :)

      Thanks again.
      Regards
      Adriaan

  6. Reply
    Alejandro

    9 years ago

    When I try to build the project I obtain this error: “Can not check remote directories. xargs exited with error code 123”. Help me please!

  7. Reply
    Pogostik

    9 years ago

    Great as far as you went. But how do we setup NetBeans to work remotely with the RaspberryPi?

Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *