NBGit, a Git plugin for Netbeans

Use Git and GitHub on Netbeans (image source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/boboroshi/2591305062/ )

For three months now I’ve managed to migrate my project on the Git version control system.

Just found, yesterday night, a Git plug in for Netbeans. It’s the first version, not all the commands are implemented, but, you will have the commit one, the diff one and the update. For the branches and the tag, you will need to wait a little.

Why use a version control :

A version control is a must have for every kind of project development.

A version control will help you to :

• Save your code
• Keep a trace on what you are doing
• Keep a history of the changes
• View the difference between the old version of the file(s) and the local one
• Keep your modification and your code safe when you work in a team
• Tag and branche your code for a better organization

And more and more and more …

The most commonly used in companies are : CVS or his fork Subversion (svn), Mercurial, Git.

You can find a good review about seven different version control systems on Smashing Magazine.

What is Git :

Git is a distributed version control system. It means that every developer of the team own a copy of the repository on their disk.

This is the one chosen by the Ruby on Rails core team development and now a lot of rails plugins (Before it was SVN).

Pro :

• Distributed version


• Quick (very quick)


• Easy to manage


• GitHub


• Open Source

Cons :

• ? I do not see any for the moment

You can find a Git cheat sheet here and the official website is here.

What’s GitHub :

GitHub is an ‘easy to open’ and cheap Git server repository provider.

Instead of managing a repository server (and the data backup/security/cost … who come with) you can open an account with GitHub and manage free public repositories.

If you need to have some private projects, you can sign up for a pay monthly account from 7$ a month.

It’s really easy to use, and if you’ve already used another version control system the ‘learning curve’ will be very short.

Your repository will be on safe hands, and will be backup on two others servers, and pushing code is only allowed if you give them your SSH keys.

So, and this Netbeans Git plugins :

Netbeans 6.5 comes with some source control plugins, but there ISN’T ANY for Git.

This issue is corrected with the NBGit plugin, purposed by Jonas.

You can find the plugin here and the git repository here. The official website is on http://nbgit.org.

For the moment there are only the basic operations like Commit/Update and Diff, but I hope branches and tags will come quickly.

I tried it yesterday night, it worked fine for me. Perhaps this plugins will help me to decide definitively between my Gedit a la Textmate and Netbeans.