NetBeans and Eclipse-like "run configurations"

Question

Is it possible to create anything similar to Eclipse's "run configurations" in NetBeans? I am working on a huge project which is currently not divided into any subprojects in Eclipse. There are in fact many applications in the project which have their own main-methods and separate classpaths. I know, it's a mess.

I'm considering about migrating the project to NetBeans. In the long run it would be sensible to create many projects but for now it would be a real life-saver if I could do similar stuff in NetBeans than in Eclipse: create "launchers" which have their own classpaths. Is this possible?

If it's easy to emulate this behaviour with "external" projects, hints about that are welcome as well.

Answer 1

What I would do is use Ant and have a bunch of targets that invoke the main() methods you are intrerested in.

In fact the advantage of this is that you can use these even use these "shortcuts" outside of your IDE on the command line, useful for continuous integration builds and things like that.

Note that NetBeans allows you to define even toolbar / menu shortcuts to Ant targets of your choosing, I find that very useful.

For example my project build files typically have shortcuts to even start and stop Tomcat, see this for an example:

http://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2006/03/25/how-to-start-and-stop-tomcat-from-ant/

Answer 2

Don't know if this is of any interests a lot months later: http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqTwoMainClassesWithArguments