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Fixing broken file references (for example missing JAR files for compilation) is too painful, if it's more than a few. At least the "Resolve Reference Problems" dialog should remember the last used path. Better would be to optionally allow multi-select in the resolve dialog and the file requester, so one could resolve everything in one step, if the missing files are in the same directory. Or allow to copy the path to all missing references. As far as I can see, this is the only problem when sharing projects between developers. This (private/private.properties) seems to be the only place where paths are hardcoded. Every other project xml or properties file could be shared (put under source control). So, when a new developer joins the project, he can just get everything from source control and then fix the broken file references and so that should be easier than it is now.
Passing to Jano to consider what future improvements we could make. Yes, private.properties is the only file that should be affected, since this is what you do not check out but must define for yourself acc. to your own disk layout. Note that if your libraries are kept inside your project (or in the same VCS working area) the IDE will automatically use relative paths in project.properties which you can check in. The Broken References dialog only appears if you have external file references that cannot be shared.
Actually, those JAR files are in a sub directory of the project, but NB still made absolute references in project.properties.
Correction: It seems like that project was created with an older dev version. In a newly created project, there are no absolute paths in private.properties. Unfortunately, there is still one entry in private.properties, that prevents sharing that file: user.properties.file=C:\\Documents and Settings\\tb\\.netbeans\\4.0beta1\\build.properties
Snip from the spec in the URL field: ---- If the user resolves a reference for one JAR file the IDE scans the folder this JAR file resides in and checks whether other missing JAR files don't reside in the same folder. This way the user can resolve multiple broken JAR file references at once. ----
Reevaluate.
Jano, fixed according to UI spec with one difference: Resolve button is always enabled so that you can alter resolved items. It is needed especially for auto resolved items. Please update your spec. Fixed in: src/org/netbeans/modules/java/project/BrokenReferencesCustomizer.java; new revision: 1.9; previous revision: 1.8 src/org/netbeans/modules/java/project/BrokenReferencesModel.java; new revision: 1.15; previous revision: 1.14