When I initially installed NetBeans 7.2.1, I was using JDK 1.6.0_27 which worked well for a Web Service Maven project using jaxws-maven-plugin (wsgen and wsimport).

I recently upgraded to JDK 1.6.0_37, then installed JDK 1.7.0_10 and changed netbeans.conf to use 1.7 as the default runtime.

When I attempted to build my web service project, the maven wsgen and wsimport targets of the jaxws-maven-plugin failed because it was reverting to using the default 1.7 platform.

I looked at the project (Right click project->Properties->Build->Compile) and it showed JDK 1.6.0_37 (first item in the list) I made a bad assumption that it was correctly set to use JDK 1.6.0_37 even though in reality, it really wasn't set, it was simply showing the first item in the list.  There was no warning or prompt that the current value stored in the nb-configuration.xml file was not a valid value.

Upon closer inspection, the value stored in the nb-configuration.xml file showed:

<netbeans.hint.jdkPlatform>JDK 1.6</netbeans.hint.jdkPlatform>

which was no longer a Java Platform value, yet no warnings or other hints were shown suggesting that this value was no longer valid.

After forcing it to use the JDK_1.6.0_37, it correctly used the right platform.

If <netbeans.hint.jdkPlatform/> could be validated and a warning displayed on either the properties page and/or the console output during a build stating that there is a problem with the setting it would help.