Netbeans equivalent of Visual Studio solution file?

Question

I am trying out Netbeans for the first time in order to do some Linux C/C++ development work. But in having a strong Visual Studio background I am having trouble finding the equivalent of a VS solution file.

A solution is a grouping of one or more projects that work together to create an application.

The closest I can see is a Project Group which is defined as:

A group is a persistent collection of IDE projects. The persistence is in the user directory and is thus per-user (not shared with other IDE users). A group has a display name. If one of the projects in it is set as the main project, that information is persisted as well.

Which makes this seem to be a tool for organizing what I am currently working on, rather than a means to organizing relationships between projects (and that is stored with the projects themselves)

So are Projects the Netbeans equivalent of VS solution files?

Answer 1

I would suggest use File-> New Project -> Maven -> POM Project to create an aggregation project. Then right-click the Modules folder in the Projects window of this project to create/add other projects to this as project.

Projects can also add other projects as dependencies regardless of whether there is an aggregation project. Right click the Libraries folder of an Ant project and "Add Project..", or the Dependencies folder of a Maven Project -> "Add Dependency" and then select the open projects tab.

Note: There are two types of Java projects in Netbeans. Ant and Maven. Ant is simpler and older and the default (just called a Java project), maven is newer, more powerful and flexible. Gradle projects can be used/created after installing the plugin.