basic Netbeans project files and enriched build documentation: fixes JAL-848

[jalview.git] / doc / building.html

diff --git a/doc/building.html b/doc/building.html
index 6f23e0f..9c09324 100755 (executable)
--- a/doc/building.html
+++ b/doc/building.html
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ file supplied).</li>
 </ul>
 With any luck, after setting your paths and JAVA_HOME correctly, you
 just need to change to the Jalview directory and run ant (this works
-from JBuilder and eclipse too).
+from JBuilder and eclipse too, but NetBeans is a bit trickier).
 <pre>
    ant
 </pre>
@@ -63,8 +63,21 @@ ant makedist
 </pre>
 
 <p>
-
-<p>
+<h1>using IDEs to build Jalview</h1>
+       <p>The Jalview source distribution includes project definitions for
+               Eclipse, Netbeans and some rather ancient Borland JBuilder .jpx
+               project files. These files should be sufficient to set up basic source
+               folders and build paths, but you will need to ensure that all .jar
+               files in the lib and appletlib directories are added to the build path
+               for your IDE project, and that the 'buildindices' target in Jalview's
+               build.xml is executed with the 'outputDir' ant property set to the
+               directory where the IDE expects to place compiled classes ('classes'
+               directory for eclipse, 'build/classes' for netbeans).</p>
+       <p>Note: It is generally not recommended that you distribute build
+               artefacts that were generated automatically via an IDE's own packaging
+               mechanism (e.g. Netbeans' executable Jar and dependent lib directory).
+               The hand-crafted ant build.xml is (currently) the only officially
+               supported method of building distributable versions of Jalview.</p>
 <address>
 <a href="mailto:help@jalview.org">Jalview development team</a>
 </address>