NetBeans -- Is it possible to bypass the IDE-generated Ant build for an existing project?

I have a Java project with sub-projects tha开发者_C百科t is currently built using NetBeans's IDE-generated Ant scripts. I am converting the entire project to a Maven build.

My Maven build works fine from the command line and loads perfectly in Eclipse. However, the only way I can get the project to load as a Maven project in NetBeans is to delete the Ant scripts, i.e. build.xml and the directory nbproject for each sub-project. It seems that as long as I have the old IDE-generated build files, NetBeans recognizes the project as a NetBeans Java project only, not as a Maven Java project, even though there is also a pom.xml file present.

Short of deleting the IDE-generated build files, is there any way to tell NetBeans to load the project as a Maven project?

I have been told that we want to keep the Ant build for a while during the transition to Maven.

Using NetBeans 6.9.1, Maven 2.2.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Well, the nb ant project metadata has precedence over occurence of pom.xml file (that's how maven projects are recognized and loaded). The whole precedence order hardwired in the IDE, you could only influence it be uninstalling the j2se ant project type for example.

So, yes. You need to get rid of the ant project metadata before you can open the project as maven project. Depending on how and when you delete the metadata, you might need to restart the IDE as well to get the new stuff loaded.

Have you seen http://wiki.netbeans.org/MavenBestPractices? It indicates that you must install the NetBeans maven plugin first. Perhaps that's why your Maven projects aren't recognized.

I must note that I'm not a NetBeans user anymore!

Here is what I ended up doing:

I wrote an Ant script (ironic, huh?) that, for every subproject of my project, renames the file nbproject/project.xml if it exists to nbproject/nb_project_disabled.xml. If nbproject/nb_project_disabled.xml exists instead, the script renames it back to nbproject/project.xml. In this way, the script toggles the opening of the project as a NetBeans Ant build or as a Maven build.

It would be nice if NetBeans, you know, had a setting to open both kinds of projects. Currently (6.9.1), there is just the "Open Project" command. In Eclipse, there is the command "Import Existing Maven Projects" vs. "Import Existing Project Into Workspace" (i.e. native Eclipse format).