[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 2 ■ Setting Up Your Java 8 IDE: An Introduction to NetBeans 8.0
Click the divider line between the code editor pane and the Output tab, at bottom, and, holding down the
mouse button, drag this divider line upward, revealing the Output tab contents, as demonstrated in Figure 2-11.
The Output tab will contain different types of output in NetBeans, such as compile operation output from Ant,
run operation output (shown in the figure), profiler operation output (which you will be exploring in the next section),
and even output from the application itself.
You may have noticed in Figure 2-10 that the code for this bootstrap Java 8/JavaFX application contains a
(System.out.println("Hello World!"); Java statement in line 25, so if you wanted to see the application that
you are currently running print to the Output pane (sometimes referred to in programming circles as the Output
Console), click the Say “Hello World” button in the “Hello World!” application (running on top of the IDE).
Once you click this button, “Hello World!” will appear in the Output tab, under the red text that says it is
executing the InvinciBagel.jar file. A .jar (Java Archive) file is the distributable format for your Java application.
Part of the compile process is creating this file, so if your compiled version works, you can have the .jar file ready to
distribute if your application design and programming are complete!
A .jar file does not contain your actual Java 8 code, but rather a compressed, encrypted “Java byte stream”
version of the application, which the JRE can execute and run (like NetBeans 8.0 is doing now). The path that is
attached to the front of the InvinciBagel.jar file tells you where the compiled .jar file resides and where NetBeans
is accessing it from currently to run it. On my system this location was C:\Users\user\Documents\NetBeansProjects\
InvinciBagel\dist\run1331700299\InvinciBagel.jar.
Let’s take a look at some of the other Output tab text to see what NetBeans did to get to the point where it could
run the .jar file for this project. First, the compiler deletes and rebuilds the build-jar-properties file, in the
\NetBeansProjects\InvinciBagel\build folder, based on the unique attributes of your game application.
Next, Ant creates a \NetBeansProjects\InvinciBagel\dist\ distribution folder to hold project .jar files and
then, detecting JavaFX usage, launches ant-javafx.jar to add JavaFX capabilities to the Ant build engine, which
will create the .jar file. Finally, you will see a warning to change the manifest.custom.codebase property from an
asterisk value (which means “everything”) to a specific value. I may get into the manifest and permissions area of
application development later in the book, after you are a bit more advanced. JavaFX is then launched, and the
.jar file is built.
Ant is the build engine, or build tool, that creates your .jar file. Other build engines, such as Maven and Gradle,
can also be used in NetBeans, because as you now know, NetBeans is extensible!
Ant is used in the Eclipse IDE as well and is an Apache open-source project that has been around for a very long
time. To learn more about the Ant build system and what it does, visit the Ant web site (http://ant.apache.org).
Next, you will explore the profiling capabilities in NetBeans 8.0, which can analyze your code at runtime and
let you know how efficiently (or inefficiently) your Java 8 code is running. This is important for a game, especially an
arcade game or any game that is moving sprites around in real-time on a user’s screen. You will be learning game
concepts and design in Chapter 6 of this book.
Profiling Your Java 8 Game Project in NetBeans 8.0
To launch the Java 8 code profiling utility, using the Profile menu at the top of the IDE, select Profile Project
(InvinciBagel) (the first menu item), as illustrated in Figure 2-12, or use the Profile Project shortcut icon, which is
visible in the collapsed screen view given in Figure 2-13 (you can tell that I collapsed the screenshot by the Java code
line numbering in the code editor pane, which contains only lines 1 and 38, the first and last numbers in the range;
I removed lines 2–37, using Photoshop).
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