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NetBeans Mailing Lists and Forums

Whether you are a user looking for help with the IDE or a developer discussing aspects of the next release, these mailing lists are the primary means of communication for NetBeans community members. To subscribe, unsubscribe, browse archives, or for more info on individual lists, please follow the appropriate links below.

Which Lists Should I Subscribe To?
Subscribing and Unsubscribing
List Etiquette

How to access Forums and Newsgroups
Troubleshooting: How to Unsubcribe
Mailing List FAQs

Which Lists Should I Subscribe To?

New users start here

If you want to stay informed of the new NetBeans releases, subscribe to nbannounce. If you need support and have questions about using the NetBeans IDE, subscribe to nbusers. These two are our main user and interest lists.

If you are interested in developing NetBeans, subscribe to nbdev and , and perhaps some other development lists. If you're heavily involved in development, you may be interested in the build process lists. If you're developing something with a user interface or are interested in usability issues, subscribe to nbui, the usability list. There are some additional per-module lists, i.e. lists hosted on and about a specific NetBeans module or project. These tend to be smaller lists, and obviously much more specialised. It's best to ask about them on nbdev if you're interested in deep-diving on a particular module. We also offer lists for community members interested in NetBeans-related job offers, the netbeans.org website, and NetBeans evangelism - see the community-related lists. You can also talk to Java developers in French, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese or Chinese, see lists in your language. See the license page for pointers on where to discuss the license.

Subscribing and Unsubscribing

To Subscribe

Follow the link to the Top-Level Mailing Lists page and click the subscribe button. Sign up here to post on forum.netbeans.org.

To Unsubscribe

Follow the link to the Top-Level Mailing Lists page and click the unsubscribe button.

If you are having trouble unsubscribing:

Please don't mail "unsubscribe me" or "help" to the list you're trying to unsubscribe from! Check the Mailing List FAQ and the How to Unsubscribe pages for help. If you still can't unsubscribe, contact the list owner - details in the FAQ.

List Etiquette

While everyone's input is always welcome, the top-level lists are quite high-volume, and putting a little effort into messages you post will mean the difference between getting a response or getting ignored. Please try to follow general common sense list etiquette when posting! A few tips:

Don't post the same message to more than one list - pick a list and post just there. If it is the wrong place someone will let you know and suggest an alternate. Do not reply to a message and change the subject completely, since threaded mailreaders show it in a weird place; send a new message when starting a new thread. Read Eric Raymond's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way guide. Please trim the original text in your reply. Include the very minimum of the original text that directly relates to your reply. Worst is the habit of making a one line response that is followed by the original e-mail in its entirety.

Similarly, if you are making a point by point reply, where you include some original text and then follow it with your reply, and then do the same with the next point, please make it easy to find your replies. If you've included 40 lines of original text and followed it by a one line reply, then go on to another 40 lines of original text, it is very hard to find your reply in there. If you must include the full 40 lines of quoted text, perhaps add a blank line after it before your reply. Add, perhaps, two blank lines after your reply before continuing on with original text again.

Please do not use styled text (different font, font size, font colour, etc) in your e-mail. When writing in plain text, everyone's e-mail readers will style it the way they want, ensuring it will be readable and pleasing to the eye everywhere.

Similarly, please don't send HTML messages! A good description of why this causes problems, as well as instructions on how to disable HTML mail in many common mail clients, is available at http://www.expita.com/nomime.html. HTML attachments are fine of course!

A note about mail filters

As several of the lists are high volume, a few conventions are in use to aid sorting and filtering. The mailing list software automatically prefixes the Subject: fields of all NetBeans lists with the name of the mailing list, so for example msgs to the nbdev list have subjects beginning with [nbdev]. It is also common for list subscribers to add some kind of topical label to the subject field, like [Stable3.1 Release], to track different, but related, threads. This is of course entirely up to the individual.

How to access Forums and Newsgroups

If you prefer discussion forums or Newsgroups to mailing lists, all NetBeans mailing list messages are archived to a fully functional forum. You can browse and search archived e-mails; a comment posted on a forum will appear on the corresponding mailing list, and vice versa.

Forum.NetBeans.org

We recommend the official NetBeans Community Forums which are sync'ed with the most widely-used NetBeans Mailing Lists.

Note: Your netbeans.org password will not work for the NetBeans Community Forums. Sign up here to post on forum.netbeans.org.

NetBeans Forums on Nabble.com

Nabble.com similarly hosts several NetBeans Forums that are sync'ed with our mailing lists.

You need to register with Nabble to use this forum service. In addition, messages posted via the forum will be moderated by us unless you sign up to the list of non-subscribers allowed to post. To save your messages being moderated, and to save the moderators work, please contact the list owner and request this.

Note : This service is supplied by the Free Hosted Public Forums service by Nabble.

Usenet / NNTP access to NetBeans lists

Alternatively, if you prefer USENET news to mailing lists, all top-level lists are gated to news - posts to the lists are propagated to the newsgroups, and vice versa. Point your newsreader at news.gmane.org.

Note that the group names are not exactly the same as the mailing list names (to match Gmane conventions), though most are quite obvious. Use your client to search for "netbeans" groups - e.g. gmane.comp.java.ide.netbeans.users.

To post to the lists via NNTP, you will need to reply to the authorisation request that GMane will send. In addition, messages posted via NNTP will be moderated by us unless you sign up to the list of non-subscribers allowed to post. To save your messages being moderated, and to save the moderators work, please contact the list owner and request this.

Note : This service is supplied by the free mailing list to NNTP gateway Gmane.