I just bundled latest Scala runtime to Scala for NetBeans, the version is 2.7.1.final, this brings two things:

First, you do not need to set SCALA_HOME any more to get whole plugins working. But, you can still set SCALA_HOME to specifying the target Scala version, if so, you should also need to download and unzip source jars to $SCALA_HOME/src;

Second, I'll begin to write some code in Scala instead of Java for Scala plugins. I can evaluate the features of Scala plugins in daily work, find and fix more bugs of plugins.

>>> Updated May 11
Mostly, infix expressions can be type inferred now. CTRL+Click on infix op name, it will bring you to declaration (since 1.0.29.0)
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Well, the type inference work is not so easy (with performance in mind), but anyway, I've got a bit more progress, at least, the chained member call can now be correctly inferred in a lot of cases. It's some level as Tor's JavaScript for NetBeans now.

First, let's create a val "node", which is a "scala.xml.Node"

Then, input '.' to invoke completion, as I know which type is of "node", the proposal items look good.

I choose "descendant" function (which returns a "List"), and input '.' again, we can see the proposal items look still good.

These features also work on Java's class.

Known issues:

• It seems the indexing/scanning for Scala standard library source will perform twice when you first installed Scala plugins
• The type inference is not consistence yet, so don't be strange for the strange behavior sometimes

Again, don't forget to download scala standard library's source jars and unzip to $SCALA_HOME/src, per sub-folder per jar

>>> Updated later
Maybe we can get completeness of J. Gosling's opinions about Java/Scaka/JVM from here
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According to Adam Bien's blog from JavaOne

During a meeting in the Community Corner (java.net booth) with James Gosling, a participant asked an interesting question: "Which Programming Language would you use *now* on top of JVM, except Java?". The answer was surprisingly fast and very clear: - Scala.

I think Fortress will also be a very good future choice when it gets mature.

Two crazy days of my spare time, I was coding between sleeping and eating, with a lot of cups of coffee. Now Scala plugins support Go-To remote declarations (CTRL + Click on var/function name), and when you put cursor on the identifier name with CTRL pressed, or under auto-completion, the doc will also be shown as tooltip.

These features work for Java classes too with a bit poor performance, I'll fix it later (fixed).

Not all identifiers have been type inferred, so these features are not applicable for all identifiers.

Please update to Scala Editing module as version 1.0.26.xxx when it's available, which is the only stable one these days. Remember to unzip Scala lib's source under $SCALA_HOME/src