[NotInControl]

Originally Posted by snoman

i know almost nothing about programming

that being said sounds like this year java teams will be using eclipse rather then netbeans and moving up to java 8. this software is available now right?

No. The software will not be released until kickoff. Only Beta test teams have access to the software at this point, for testing purposes. FIRST has not made any announcement about releasing the software tools earlier at this point, so we can not assume they will.

Originally Posted by snoman

also will the old crio be capable of running this new stuff?

No, the JVM on the cRIO is a squawk JVM based on Java ME. The RoboRio is based on SE 8 embedded. While the new 2015 Java API is largely the same, there is enough changes that the NEW stuff will not run on the cRIO. However, all of the 2014 JavaME based tools for netbeans will still work on the cRIO.

Originally Posted by snoman

will the roborio be able to run the "old" stuff?

When you say run, I assume you mean take the jar file compiled from 2014 and run it on the Roborio. This will not work. The files compiled using the 2014 FRC tools will not run without modifying the Roborio beyond the scope of FRC. It may be possible if you are very familiar with Linux, installing additional JVMs, and the WPILIB HAL, but I doubt this will be FRC competition legal.

However, if you have access to the java source code in 2014, you can use it in 2015. It will require a few source code modifications, before it will compile again, but it should be trivial (rename class names, change port numbers, remove, constructor parameters which are now non-existent like module number). Once you modify the 2014 source code to match the 2015 java libraries and compile using the new 2015 eclipse tools, your Java project based on 2014 code should run on the RoboRio.

Originally Posted by snoman

you can transfer programming to roborio using a USB correct?

Usb, Wifi, or tether Ethernet.

Hope this helps,
Kevin