Creating A Great Dev Environment

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:39:00 -0000

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. [More]

Reminiscing Over IDEs of Old

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:34:00 -0000

We recently got some new PCs in work and that has forced me to re-examine my entire workflow for doing development. I thought I'd share some of the findings and pitfalls I've encountered along the way in the interest of helping others get setup efficiently. The tale begins many years ago...

I can remember the early days of Hotdog Pro, and then falling for Nick Bradbury's editor named Homesite (which was acquired by Allaire way back in 1996). Homesite was made even better one Allaire integrated things like RDS, allowing us to work easier with files on the server. But that was always a risky proposition because Internet connections were not too great and if your connection quit while saving the file back to the server, you could end up with lost code and no backup. Allaire ended up beefing up Homesite and releasing a version as ColdFusion Studio which had integrated debugging and some other CF-specific features.

Fast forward to the Macromedia acuisition and Dreamweaver comes on the scene - taking things up a notch and allowing for better project management. It is now possible to edit my files locally and have them automatically transfer to the server on save, freeing me from the worry of bad Internet connections. But still not a perfect world.. Dreamweaver is slow (not to mention expensive). As a die-hard hand coder, the visual design features of Dreamweaver never really appealed to me, and I ended up with a bulky editor but one that gave me some critical features for working on and managing projects.

As a side note, for those who are wondering what ever happened to CF Studio? With the release of Dreamweaver MX and the Studio MX suite, Macromedia felt it was confusing to also have a CF Sudio in the product line. Since CF Studio was really only a souped-up version of Homesite, that name was killed and we were left with Homesite+, and the program was (and is) made available on the Dreamweaver and Studio CDs. They also felt it unnecessary to continue with both products and froze development of Homesite+, though tag libraries are still made available for newer versions of ColdFusion.

So where do we go from here? What about source control? Ahh... CFEclipse to the rescue... In an upcoming post, I'll go over my new setup and explain how you can get all of the tools you need for a great development environment - and all at a cost of $0!

Building Blocks - CFEclipse

Creating A Great Dev Environment

Reminiscing Over IDEs of Old