Upgrade to NetBeans 7.0

Netbeans 7.0 was recently released (version 6.9.1 was being used for development on Windows), which contains support for git via a plug-in. Getting that to work took some research and experimentation. It appeared that the git plug-in only allowed creating a new git repository, not opening an existing one. However, it was discovered that if a new project is created from existing source and standalone make file in a directory with a git repository, NetBeans will then see the repository.

There was a problem building the project. The compiler complained that it didn't recognize the -static-libstdc++ option. NetBeans was still executing GCC 4.4.5, even though it was correctly pointing to the GCC 4.6.0 directory. Setting the path to include GCC 4.6.0 before executing NetBeans from the command line did not help.

Next an attempt was made to run the debugger on the project. There was no debug option in the standalone make file. Previously, the project was set up under NetBeans and it generated its own complex and convoluted set of files for generating what it needed to build the project. Both a Release and a Debug configuration was created by NetBeans. To release the project, NetBeans was used to create a standalone make file instead of releasing all the NetBeans files, which would have required NetBeans to build.

This time around, NetBeans was given this (heavily modified) make file when the project was created, though there was no Debug configuration. The make file was temporarily modified to turn on debug compiling. The make system needs to be reworked to allow both a release and debug configuration without using the system built into NetBeans.