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CF IDE Announced

So I go to a meeting and of course all the cool stuff is announced…

CF IDE! Bolt!

The good:

• Object Relational Mapping auto-configuration
• Application Code Generation
• Server management

These other features are already in CFEclipse or available via a plugin:

• Easily extensible through the Eclipse framework
• CFML, HTML, Javascript, and CSS Syntax Highlighting
• Code assist for tags, functions, variables, and components
• Code folding
• Snippet creation and management
• Outline viewing
• RDS Explorer for files and databases
• Line-level Debugging

The bad:

• Not released until next year (coincide with the CF9 release?)
• No price info
• No info on platforms supported. I really hope they can bake in 100% Linux support!!

They have a beta signup here: http://www.adobe.com/go/bolt which unfortunately only allows you to select one OS for your development platform?  Hello? I develop on PC at work and Linux at home…

Adobe Labs page here: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Bolt

So we’ll have to wait and see …  (and I hope the photo above in no way influences my beta application…)

The CFEclipse world has been quiet lately.  The mailing list has been slow, bug reports are rare, and it seems people are making due with the latest ‘beta’ release which for the most part works well with the latest Eclipse 3.4.  I poke around on the CFEclipse wiki doing occasional updates but wonder if anyone reads them.

So what’s next?  Adobe has done a few CF IDE surveys in the past but so far we’ve seen little from it…

• In August 2006 Damon Cooper asked developers about an IDE.
• In January 2008 Jason Delmore posted the CF IDE survey.

There have been rumors for awhile that Adobe would announce something at IDE related at MAX.  I can’t remember when I first heard that - maybe during Ben’s AIR tour?  But as we all know MAX is coming up in a few weeks so we won’t have long to wait.   A few more teases have come out in the last week or so:

Tim Buntel has a blog post about Flex Builder announcements at MAX:

Well, what we’re showing at MAX should put any of those concerns to rest. Very exciting news for CF developers and CF developers who have wanted to get into Flex, but who have stayed away due to the learning curve or other issues.

Ben Forta has a note about the big announcements being during the day 2 keynote:

Well, we’re doing things a little differently this year, and much of the really exciting product news is going to be part of the Day 2 keynote…  And so consider this a friendly public service announcement - don’t miss the Day 2 keynote, really!

So will we ColdFusion developers finally get some IDE love?  Will it be based on Eclipse or something else?  Will it be free?  I’ll be watching feeds, Twitter, etc and hope to see some good news from the keynotes!