Netbeans platform - what default modules can I remove?

Question

I'm making a fairly simple app with the Netbeans Platform. I want to get rid off most of the stuff that comes by default in the menus. I know I can hide it with a layer.xml file, or something like that, but I don't want to have all this extra weight in my app if I'm not using it.

I've got as far as finding out that I can deselect modules in the libaries tab of the project properties, and this will get rid of stuff in the menu, but it's really hard to know what the modules do and which one's I don't want. For example, I know I don't want the "Page setup..." dialog in the file menu, but what module is providing that? The "core" module sounds important, but it's dependant on a lot of other modules, so keeping it is preventing me from removing those.

Is there any documentation that describes what the modules do and which menu actions they provide? Or is there examples of sets of modules to have for particular types of apps?

Answer 1

The Netbeans Platform Developers' FAQ has an entry on the minimum modules needed to create a platform application:

http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqNonGuiPlatformApp

This describes a truly minimum set of modules, however -- so minimum that it doesn't include a GUI at all.

Deciding which platform components you do or don't need requires at least a broad understanding of the platform architecture, and it sounds like you are relatively new to the platform. Therefore I would also suggest looking at the Netbeans Platform Learning Trail, which has links to a plethora of resources like tutorials, javadocs, blogs and articles.

The aforementioned Developers' FAQ has some info on getting started, as well:

http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansDeveloperFAQ#Tutorials_and_important_starting_points

To give you a more specific answer, it would be helpful to know what kind of application you want to develop with the platform, as well as what version of the platform you are using.