NetBeans v8.0.1 in a Docker container

• Docker 1.2+ (should work fine on 1.0+ but I haven't tried)
• An X11 socket

Assuming $HOME/bin is on your PATH and that you are able to run docker commands without sudo, you can use the provided netbeans script to start a disposable NetBeans Docker container with your project sources mounted at /home/developer/workspace within the container:

# The image size is currently 1.131 GB, so go grab a coffee while Docker downloads it
docker pull fgrehm/netbeans:v8.0.1
L=$HOME/bin/netbeans && curl -sL https://github.com/fgrehm/docker-netbeans/raw/master/netbeans > $L && chmod +x $L
cd /path/to/java/project
netbeans

Once you close NetBeans the container will be removed and no traces of it will be kept on your machine (apart from the Docker image of course).

NetBeans plugins are kept on $HOME/.netbeans inside the container, so if you want to keep them around after you close it, you'll need to share it with your host.

For example:

docker run -ti --rm \
           -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
           -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
           -v `pwd`/.netbeans-docker:/home/developer/.netbeans \
           -v `pwd`:/workspace \
           fgrehm/netbeans:v8.0.1

You might have an issue with the X11 socket permissions since the default user used by the base image has an user and group ids set to 1000, in that case you can run either create your own base image with the appropriate ids or run xhost + on your machine and try again.