Can you upgrade netbeans without downloading the whole install? [closed]

Question

I can update the plugins, but I don't see a way to update for the whole product. I have Netbeans 6.7.0.

Thanks!

Answer 1

No. Not with a normal binary install.

You could build it yourself from the source. Then you'd just need to use subversion to upgrade your local sources to a new release branch and rebuild. This would probably be more trouble than you are willing to go through.

Answer 2

This information is available for each release in the Upgrading and Multiple Installation Support section of the installation instructions on Netbeans website. For example, in Netbeans 7.1 it says:

Multiple installations of NetBeans IDE 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x can coexist with NetBeans IDE 7.1.1 on the same system. You do not have to uninstall the earlier versions in order to install or run NetBeans IDE 7.1.1.

If you have an existing installation of NetBeans IDE you can choose whether or not to import the user settings from the existing user directory when you run NetBeans IDE 7.1.1 for the first time.

Note: Incremental version upgrades of the IDE cannot be performed at this time. To upgrade to the most recent version you must download the latest installer.

So while you can't upgrade you can easily import the settings from one installation to another. You will be asked the first time you launch a new installation.

On Windows:

On Linux:

The imported settings include (to quote Netbeans help):

• Keyboard shortcuts
• Most Source Editor font and color settings
• Java Platform Manager contents
• Library Manager contents
• Database drivers
• Servers

You can recreate the conditions of the first launch at any time by deleting your current userdir. When you restart the IDE you will be prompted with the option of importing settings from a previous version of the IDE.