Use netbeans editor as a standalone component in a Jetpack compose desktop app

[parrotcar00]

I am building a desktop app in jetpack compose multiplatform and I need a code editor component. I really like the code editor in netbeans ide and was wondering if there was a way to use that editor in a kotlin jetpack compose app? I'm thinking using it in place of visual studio code with webview but unsure if this is possible.

[daveshenal]

Yes, technically, but it's not straightforward....

Compose Desktop can host Swing components via SwingPanel (you create the JComponent in its factory lambda). That part is easy and well-documented and people already embed Swing code editors like RSyntaxTextArea this way.

The hard part is NetBeans's editor itself - it's built as NetBeans Platform modules that expect the module system around them (Lookup, MimeLookup for language settings, layer.xml registration). It's not a "add this jar, new up this class" component. People have pulled it out standalone before (just the editor module jars + bootstrapping minimal Lookup/MimeLookup to get an NbEditorKit-backed JEditorPane running outside the IDE), and it works... but you lose most of what makes it nice (code completion, hyperlinking, language plugins), since those are themselves NetBeans modules tied to the platform.

If what you actually want is "a good code editor in a Kotlin desktop app" rather than "NetBeans's editor specifically," you'll get there much faster with RSyntaxTextArea (Swing, drop into SwingPanel directly) or a Monaco/VS Code webview bridge. Same idea you were already considering, just skip the NetBeans dependency.

[parrotcar00]

The Netbeans editor is one of the prettiest editors I have seen.
I love building all things in Kotlin these days.

What's happening here is I am trying to combine the 2 things above to try and build an editor with jetpack compose, kotlin and netbeans editor.

I think I'll have to go with a vscode webview based component for now but what would have been cool is if I could've used the Netbeans editor. In this scenario, of course, I would supply my own dsl parser, an lsp implementation just like I do with vscode.