How can I update the splash screen, title bar and other branding items via AutoUpdate?

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Note: These pages are being reviewed.

It’s easy to distribute new and/or updated modules via AutoUpdate, but you might also like to update branding items like the splash screen and version number in the application’s title bar to reflect the changes.

To do this, create a new module in your suite. Edit its build.xml and AFTER the line

<import file="nbproject/build-impl.xml"/>

insert

<property file="${suite.dir}/nbproject/project.properties"/>
<target name="netbeans-extra" depends="init">
    <branding cluster="${cluster}" overrides="${suite.dir}/branding" token="${app.name}"/>
</target>

Next, add the following to the modules' nbproject/project.properties file. You may also need to update the list of files in extra.module.files to include only those JARs which your suite actually brands.

nbm.needs.restart=true
nbm.is.global=true
nbm.target.cluster=${app.name}
extra.module.files=\
        core/locale/core_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/ext/locale/updater_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/locale/org-netbeans-core-windows_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/locale/org-netbeans-core_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/locale/org-netbeans-modules-autoupdate-ui_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/locale/org-netbeans-modules-favorites_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/locale/org-netbeans-modules-javahelp_${app.name}.jar,\
        modules/locale/org-netbeans-modules-projectui_${app.name}.jar

Finally, run the "nbms" Ant target on your suite and deploy the updates to your AutoUpdate center.

Note that you may encounter problems doing this in NetBeans 6.0.

Thanks to Matteo Di Giovinazzo for sharing how to do this on the dev@openide list.