Symlink source + Netbeans

Question

I prefer not to use Netbeans when I write Java code for a project, but Netbeans is perfect for refactoring, and works nicely with svn.

The project is open-source on sourceforge, so I do not want to push other people into using Netbeans. My idea is to symlink the netbeans source direcory with the directory I consider to be the trunk of my project. Is this a good/bad idea?

EDIT: I solved it by adding adding the source directory to Netbeans instead. Did not realize one could separate the Project from source.

Answer 1

http://wiki.netbeans.org/AutomaticProjects may be helpful in your case, assuming you have an Ant script. So long as NB can figure out what your script is doing as far as javac and the like are concerned, it will let the IDE open your project's sources - enough to do refactoring, run unit tests, use SVN, etc. - without adding any metadata to the source tree.