Zach, You are right there is already a IntelliJ plugin. It really makes it easier to develop Android project on IntelliJ.

But if you take a glimpse on the "Getting started" wiki page http://code.google.com/p/idea-android/wiki/GettingStarted, you will see it is "work in progress" currently.

My opinion is that there should be a consistent user experience throughout an end-user software product. As a netbeans user I am perhaps a little bit spoiled. Take a look e.g on the following to introductionary tutorial pages.

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/mobility/loginscreen.html http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/mobility/cdc-quickstart.html

Compared to other competitors Netbeans offers a little bit more.

I do not measure with Google's ADT, for an Eclipse plugin it shows what's possible, AFAIK - and the Eclipse people seem to love it.

Netbeans targets traditionally a different user spectrum. Things must work out of the box, user experience and user productivity matter a lot. Plugins reliability should not depend on knowing what plugins work together and what plugin combinations are evil.

Netbeans has much more abstraction levels to make every day life easier. All the dirty configuration work is done for the end-user by the IDE.

e.g. You can simply drop in a new Java JDK, you do not have to update things like file path like bootclasspath yourself all is done by your IDE. IDE checks if your JDK is fine. Backstage all the possible hassles are hidden by the GeneralPlatformInstall API, which has to be implemented by the platform vendor.

That's also why we have decided not to try a lazy port of the ADT to Netbeans IDE.

We are working hard on integrating Android as far as possible into the Netbeans Java IDE. From the end-user experience it is simply yet another Java platform, nothing special to worry about. You only have to learn the Android specific API, that's all.

In the following screen shot you can see three different Java Android Platform SDK, Java Platform SDK folders are in Netbeans always marked by a small diamond on the folder icon. By the way our Android Netbeans module suite also supports older versions of the Netbeans Java IDE. We take backward compatibility serious.

http://ruethschilling.info/assets/openlab/android/Andr01d.04.png

The current Android SDK's are not suitable to be used with the Netbeans Java IDE, the biggest problem is the good looking JavaDoc delievered with the Android SDK, Netbeans does not parse it well. It is a real show-stopper. We are able to sanitize the JavaDoc for Netbeans with an XSLT script, but the restrictive Android SDK license prevent us shipping such solutions.

Cheers, George