Giving Java 8 a spin using NetBeans 7.4 RC

Being at JavaOne 2013 has inspired me to heed the call to option from the Java team at Oracle and give JDK 8 Early Adopter a spin. This article describes how to get from zero to running your first Lambda expression in a Java 8 program in about 10 minutes. It is definitely not a hard task. After going through these steps, you are ready to really start trying out Java SE 8 (including that long awaited new Data API).

The steps are simply:

• Download JDK 8 EA
• Download NetBeans 7.4RC1
• Install JDK 8 EA
• Install NetBeans 7.4RC1
• Run NetBeans and create a new Java project

The steps in detail:

1. Download JDK 8 EA

Go to : https://jdk8.java.net/download.html en download JDK 8 Early Adopter

2. Download NetBeans 7.4RC1

Now you are ready to start installing. I happened to use Windows7 as my operating system but the steps on Linux are very similar:

3. Install JDK 8 EA

Run the JDK 8 installer and click through the installation steps

And you are done.

4. Install NetBeans 7.4RC1

Run the NetBeans installer.

This is an important step: this is where you select the JDK to use with NetBeans; in this case this would have to be the JDK 8 that we have just been installing. Note: you can also configure the JDK of choice later on in the netbeans.conf file.

Complete the installer wizard to make the installation start.

The netbeans.conf file contains the JDK reference:

5. Run NetBeans and create a new Java project

Create a new project of type Java Application.

Provide a name and the target directory for the application

Press Finish.

Then edit the class LambdaTrial, for example with the following code that makes use of a Lambda expression (that is passed to the sort method call on Arrays):

Now run the application, and see the effect of the Lambda expression:

package lambdatrial;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class LambdaTrial {

   public static int myCompare(String in, String out){
       System.out.println("Compare "+in+" and "+out);
        return in.length() - out.length();
    }

         
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String[] strings = new String[] {"Pear","Pineapple","Apple","Lemon"};
        
        Arrays.sort(strings, LambdaTrial::myCompare);
        for(String fruit: strings) {
            System.out.println(fruit);
                    
    } 
}

}

This demonstrates that with very little effort, we can create Java SE 8 code and run it. I can only suggest you try it out for yourselves.

Resources

NetBeans 7.4RC1 Information, Download Link & release notes: https://netbeans.org/community/releases/74/

NetBeans installation instructions: https://netbeans.org/community/releases/74/install.html

NetBeans configuration of JDK: http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqJdkHome

Download JDK 8 Early Adopter: https://jdk8.java.net/download.html