Here is a quick run down of how to build and run Netbeans from source under OS X 10.6. I highly recommend giving this a go as there are always lots of good features being added to Netbeans at the moment I am trying out the Zend support in the latest version.

  1. Install Ant & Java SDK I did this by installing the OS X developer tool kit or follow the guide here http://www.asceticmonk.com/blog/?p=388
  2. Download & Install the latest version of Mercurial – http://mercurial.berkwood.com/
  3. Clone the main branch
    `hg clone http://hg.netbeans.org/main/`
  4. Create a .antrc in your home directory and add `ANT_OPTS=”-Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m”` to the file.
  5. Change into the directory main
    `cd main`
  6. Then just run ant
    `ant`
  7. It takes about 30 minutes the first time on my MacBook Pro if it builds with no errors your good, to run it you need to run the built file `./nbbuild/netbeans/bin/netbeans`