If I'm going to use Eclipse for ColdFusion development, what packages do I need?
This question just came into my mailbox and I see it enough on cf-talk and other listservs so I figured it warranted a quick blog post. If you are just concerned about doing ColdFusion development with Eclipse, then you want to grab:
CFEclipse - This is the main package for doing CF development with Eclipse. It will give you syntax highlighting, CFC method views, tag completion, etc.
Adobe CF Extensions - This gives you RDS support as well as query building/exploring (you can view your tables and write simple queries as well as testing them). It also gives you the sexy log viewer. This tool lets you watch a log file and as messages are appended, they automatically show up in the viewer. You also get the debugger and snazzy wizards.
Adobe CF Help for Eclipse - The ColdFusion docs for Eclipse
There are certainly other packages a good developer will want, but these will get you going with ColdFusion.
Comments
http://www.aptana.com/docs/index.php/Plugging_Apta...
Then again, these _are_ comments, and folks can just ignore them.
So um... ignore me. It's your guys blog as much as it is mine. ;)
http://www.aptana.com/docs/index.php/Plugging_Apta...
I use CFEclipse everyday with these installed.
Eclipse 3.4
CFEclipse 1.3.2 beta
Subclipse - so I can access our SVN servers.
Mylyn
JS Eclipse from Adobe Labs.
Web Developer Tools - from the Eclipse download site
EPIC Perl for my PERL Code
I think that's all. I pretty much have the same configuration on my work Windows XP machine as I do on my MacBookPro.
Wil
Thanks for clearing that up.
http://subclipse.tigris.org/
http://www.open.collab.net/downloads/desktops/
Installing both will make merging in SVN 1.5 a breeze~!
Here's what you won't hear on most ColdFusion community blogs (my opinion): Probably the best package for an Eclipse ColdFusion development setup is Dreamweaver CS4, which runs as a standalone, totally-external-to-Eclipse plugin substitute.
One of the coolest things about the Dreamweaver package is that you don't even have to have Eclipse installed to run it.
Free trial:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/
Which eclipse package do i need?
(Eclipse Classic,Eclipse IDE for Java Developers....)
Eclipse has been so popular in the community because it's FREE and it's a good tool.
For me though there is no comparison - I agree with you and would say that Dreamweaver CS4 is an awesome tool for web development. There are so many integrated features (way too many to list here) that make my life as a web developer SO much easier.
I love it and am glad to have spent the money on my whole Adobe CS4 Web Suite out of my own pocket.
"One of the coolest things about the Dreamweaver package is that you don't even have to have Eclipse installed to run it"
that is really cool :))))
The RDS Dataview works but I have to "refresh" the database or table before I can expand it (without the refresh, it never expands the db to see tables or tables to see columns (right-clicking to get to the refresh option or the refresh button on top of the view window works).
I haven't gotten the Services Browser to work on Ganymede with web services.
I have been fighting with this for days not realizing why it wouldn't work. My old 3.2 eclipse worked with the rds set just fine after removing the port number but the lates set won't let you remove the port - a simple refresh.
Who'd a thunk! Thanks so much!!!!
One thing you did fail to mention in your post is which version of Eclipse. Actually, there are two decisions, one is product version and the other is package version. CFEclipse has a note on their website regarding the problems working with the latest version of Eclipse (3.4). Therefore, to get started, one should stick with the Europa version of Eclipse (3.3). When you go to the Eclipse downloads page, you need to click on the link for older versions to find Europa.
Once at the Europa downloads, then one needs to decide which package version. There are versions for Java Developers, Java EE Developers, C/C++ Developers, and RCP/Plug-in Developers. The last version provides the source code to aid in developing Eclipse Plug-ins. When I rebuilt my set-up recently, I chose the Java Developers version. It provided the base Eclipse package, plus some of the basic WTP (Web Tools Platform), like XML Editor.
I did add Collabnet's Desktop, SubEclipse, the CF packages you mentioned, and Aptana Community Edition Plug-in to my set up.
A future topic for you to address is how to use Eclipse for CF development. This is one area where I still struggle, specifically when it comes to whether to locate projects in my personal workspace (I am using Windows, both Vista and XP, along with IIS) or in one's web folder (e.g., on Windows, this is typically C:|D:\inetpub). Along with this is when checking out from Subversion, does one check out the entire project, or the trunk/branch they are interested in. This still is confusing to me. While, I like having multiple projects available in the working set, unlike Dreamweaver's single project focus, Dreamweaver's local/remote site setup has worked great (at least when developing on Windows). I develop/test locally, then deploy to a test server for customer review/acceptance testing, and then deploy to production server. In my current case, the production server is a staging server that uses a commercial tool to update the production cluster servers.
Thanks for the post. I hope to see more on this topic. It can be confusing.
Is Dreamweaver CS4 that good? Anyone else use it for CFC dev?
http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2008/11/11...
As to actually using Eclipse, I could show an example of what I typically do. To be honest, the old ACME Guide (not sure if it has been updated recently) was the best at this. As to your question about SVN - I always check out the entire project. It's only slow the first time and thats if the project is large.
regards,
larry
The people who make MyEclipse also have a server based plugin management tool called Pulse (http://www.poweredbypulse.com/). One of the packages included in Pulse is CFEclipse.
regards,
The only thing I had to add that Yoxos didn't offer was XMLbuddy, the Adobe ColdFusion extensions, and Flex Builder (of course).
Or any hints available to convert the old html based Homesite help files to eclipse plugin format?
thanks anf regards
I don't think there was ever a version created for CF7, but there is one for CF8 (which aside from the new CF8 tags/functions, is still perfectly applicable to CF7). You can download it directly from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/downloads..... Look for the item titled "ColdFusion 8 Help Files for Eclipse".
