The newest version 1.1.3 of the Vaadin Plug-in For NetBeans has dramatically new behavior when creating a new Vaadin app project. Formerly, the plugin created a single project in a single folder, nice and simple. Now the new plugin creates multiple folders, apparently each a project on its own.
Is this a feature or a bug? Is there any documentation somewhere?
What are these multiple folders? Separate projects or some kind of related modules?
How do I use them? Where do I put my app code? How do I run or debug my app?
Do I need to open all of these projects in NetBeans every time I start to work? Or is one project the boss and subsumes the others?
What's their purpose? Why the change for the previous simple approach?
If I were to start using Mercurial or some other version control system, what would I need to include ?
Is this change coming from the plugin or from a new underlying Maven script? If I drop NetNeans and use IntelliJ or Eclipse will I avoid this confusing mess?
I'm not sure if you still need help with this but one of the things you may have missed is the README that appears in the directory of your new Vaadin project. I'll go through the process in as much detail as I can since I'm sure someone else probably has the same questions/issues (as you and I did).
In particular, the README states:
"The project consists of the following three modules:
So to answer your questions:
As mentioned by Andre, this is a feature of the new Vaadin Maven archetype. You may want to do a quick Google search on "Multi-module Maven projects"
The folders are related modules as mentioned in the README
You'll probably deal with the UI module for the most part during development I'd imagine. But read the "Workflow" section of the README to get a better understanding of the deployment procedure.
The "boss project" is the parent module. Opening this one should also allow you to work with the others.
The purpose is probably do define delineate separate tasks (ui and widgetset) better I'd imagine.
You might be better off with Eclipse in the short run but I tend to like the Netbeans plugin better and I think so do the Vaadin developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TompuzySD8 . This video is a good starting point if you're new to Vaadin + Netbeans by the way.
What you'll want to do, assuming you're still working with NetBeans 8.0.2 with Vaadin 1.1.3 plugin, is after creating your new project, right click the parent (i.e. the root) module and select Build. This compiles the whole project and is essentially the equivalent of running "mvn install". Then right click the ui module and select Embedded Jetty | Run (or simply run if you prefer not to use Jetty). Then simply open up your browser of choice and open up localhost.
Do note if you make changes to the widgetset (i.e. add add-ons) you may need to stop and start your server if you're getting a "Failed to load the widgetset" errors (also make sure you compile the widgetset module first too!). Adding an add-on through the NetBeans Vaadin Plugin Add-on Browser only affects the ui module I believe (and so does the Build Widgetset and Theme command) so you'll need to make sure you add the necessary Dependency Maven code (found on your add-ons page in the Vaadin directory) to the pom.xml under the widgetset module and then execute the Build command to compile it. Otherwise I think you'll get some sort of "Check its component connector's @Connect mapping" error at run-time.
Let me know if you still have questions and/or if you're having trouble with dealing with add-ons.