So what's the best setup for doing ColdFusion development?  How can you be most efficient?  That question will have many different answers for different people, but I think the way I'm currently doing things will work for a lot of people.  And best of all, every piece of software mentioned below is available for download free of charge.

In the past, I always used an external web server for testing my code since I didn't want to slow down my local machine.  To make it easier for developers, ColdFusion has included an integrated web server since version 6.0 can be used for local development.  This web server is installed by default with the ColdFusion Developer Edition, and is a fully-functional, single-IP version of ColdFusion Enterprise.  The webroot for this testing server is at cfmxroot/wwwroot (more on this later).

CFEclipse is the new kid on the block when it comes to code editors.  This project, based upon the open-source Eclipse platform, was originally begun by Rob Rohan and continues to pick up steam amongst ColdFusion developers.  It's really easy to add plugins to eclipse, and one of the critical ones you'll need is the Subclipse plugin for working with Subversion repositories.  This will allow you to handle all of your source control tasks from right within Eclipse.  For those not yet using source control, stop everything and don't write another line of code until you get Subversion setup. For a detailed rundown on how to get started, check out this blog post.

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