Next we need some interaction with our source control. If you aren’t using source control stop and go address that problem first! :)

In our previous post we installed Package Control.

Open Sublime. Then click Preferences > Package Control > Package Control: Install Package

Scroll through the long list of available packages, you are looking for “Tortoise”.

TortoiseSVN, TortoiseGit and TortoiseHg integration with Sublime Text 2 via menus and keyboard shortcuts.

Click “Tortoise” to install. If you’re project is already checked out from Subversion you should be able to right click on files/directories and get some SVN related options now.

Sublime Tortoise

I also setup my TortoiseSVN client to use BeyondCompare as it’s DIFF tool – so when I select “Diff” from the Sublime menu, BeyondCompare is used to compare the working copy. Nice! This sort of emulates the BeyondCVS plugin available in Eclipse which I have blogged about before.

Check out my wiki for more Sublime resources…

I wish CFDumps showed the file and line where the dump came from. #coldfusion that would really help at times!

This is easy if you are using ColdFusion Builder and CFEclipse!

First setup a custom Task Tag.

In ColdFusion Builder navigate to ColdFusion > Profiles > Editor > Task Tags.

Click “New”, and enter CFDUMP for your task name. I set these to ‘high’ priority.

Now when you add a cfdump tag – add a CFDUMP comment with it.

<!--- CFDUMP: Debugging --->
<cfdump var="#myVar#" top=2 label="MyDump ( myVar)" abort="true">

You can do this through a snippet or I prefer to use AutoHotkey…

;-- Wrap selected text in CFDump/CFAbort ---

; whatever hot key combo you want - I use F1
  clipboard =

  send ^c

  clipwait, 1

  If ErrorLevel = 0

  {

    clipboard = <!--- CFDUMP: Debugging --->`n<cfdump var="#%clipboard%#" top=2 label="My Dump ( %clipboard% )" abort="true">`n

    send ^v

  }

return

So I simply select my text, hit F1 and the selected text is written to my clipboard, wrapped in the comment and cfdump and then printed out to the screen.

Once your comment is in place – simply open the Tasks view in Eclipse and your CFDUMPS should appear in the list along with a column that displays what line number!

I was tinkering with Notepad++ ( a great text editor ) and noticed it had a plugin to sort text…

TextFX > TextFX Tools > Sort lines case sensitive (at column)

This will turn

<cfproperty name="submitURL" ...
<cfproperty name="date_applicant_signed" ...
<cfproperty name="special_conditions_limitations"  ...
<cfproperty name="chair_signature" ...
<cfproperty name="special_privileges" ...
<cfproperty name="applicant_signature_confirm" ...

Into an much easier to scan:

<cfproperty name="applicant_signature_confirm" ...
<cfproperty name="chair_signature" ...
<cfproperty name="date_applicant_signed" ...
<cfproperty name="special_conditions_limitations"  ...
<cfproperty name="special_privileges" ...
<cfproperty name="submitURL" ...

But going back and forth from CFEclipse to Notepad++ was a pain. A quick search turned up the Sort-It plugin for Eclipse.  After installing it you should have a new menu item on the Edit menu > Sort.

I’ve found this is really handy for sorting properties, variable declarations, CSS, etc.

OpenCF Summit is a community gathering focused exclusively on advancing free and open source software in the CFML community.

If you’re interested in diving into the free software CFML engines,  learning more about the free software movement, and interacting with the most progressive thinkers in the CFML community, OpenCF Summit is for you!

When I saw this I immediately thought CFEclipse should have a presence there and who better but Denny (our main developer) to represent CFEclipse?  Denny has posted a blog entry on the CFEclipse sit. You can read it here: Want to see Den at a conference? Donate!

The event is only $199 ( a bargain!)  but factor in travel and lodging and it adds up.

We have a donate button on the site for WePay (see Denny’s post above) and for those of you outside the US Denny has posted his PayPal information on the CFEclipse mailing list.

If you are using CFEclipse please consider making  donation.  I think the OpenCF Summit will be a great event for the CFML community and I would love for Denny to be able to attend and talk to others about contributing to open-source projects.

If you are done with your turkey I’d encourage you to go read that, I’ll wait.

I’d like to clarify a few things about my post from yesterday:

1. My blog post was meant to reflect my opinion. I was not speaking for CFEclipse or I’d have blogged about it there (did you know we now have a blog?)  And I wasn’t attacking or slamming anyone. I apologize if it came across that way.
2. I do diddly squat on the CFEclipse project compared to the hard work folks like Denny do under the hood.  When I feel that work is being belittled  I’m going to speak up about it. More on that below.
3. I never mentioned anything about price. I have no problems with Adobe charging for CFBuilder.  We’ve already had that discussion.

After re-reading Adam’s blog post and the white paper my only real gripe is with some of the wording and tone in the blog post.  What irked me (again this is my opinion) were statements like:

In just one version, ColdFusion Builder didn’t just catch up to CFEclipse, it took many steps beyond it.

That is to be expected with a large team of developers and a budget. :)

Professionals who make their living writing code … will also prefer ColdFusion Builder.

I think the paper could have focused more on the positives – CFBuilder is a great tool that should sell itself:  CFBuilder extension (which was a brilliant idea), RDS support, debugging, etc.

There was a lot of discussion which cropped up yesterday. Some of it was negative but overall there was some great insight which I’m going to be thinking about moving forward (and before  I blog again) :)

Today’s a day of thanks and I’d like to thank anyone who uses, or contributes to CFEclipse!

I’d also like to thank Adobe for supporting our beloved CFML language. Everyday I’m thankful I go to work and write ColdFusion instead of .NET.

And next time I see Adam I’ll buy him a beer. No wait – we’re the open source project – he can buy me a beer! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Think ColdFusion Builder v.1 and CFEclipse are the same? Think again. Adobe just published a new whitepaper comparing the two CFML development tools to set the record straight. In just one version, ColdFusion Builder didn’t just catch up to CFEclipse, it took many steps beyond it.

I’ve been a avid supporter of CFEclipse for awhile and when Adobe announced they were developing their own IDE – I never saw them as a competitor. There are only two of us – why fight?  But apparently Adobe needs to bash someone and have set their sites on the geeky kid on the playground.

A whitepaper? Really? You could have donated the money you spent on creating that to the CFEclipse project! :)

But clearly we are talking about a two different endeavors here and for Adobe to whip out white papers and comparison charts is a little unfair I think.

CFBuilder is built by a large team of developers.  Their full time job is to develop CFBuilder.  I met several of them at CFUnited and they are a great group who I have no doubt are passionate about their product.  But at the end of the day they are developing a commercial product for Adobe.

CFEclipse on the other hand is a free, open source tool that has been developed over the years by a small, passionate group of people. Many people have worked on CFEclipse over the years but over the years there is usually only one or two people actually cranking out code.

Currently Denny is our main programmer and he has done a tremendous job fixing bugs and adding features.  He’s done that while supporting his family, working a regular job, contributing to other projects and dealing with all the other ‘distractions’ of every day life.  He does that for free.

So why does Adobe feel the need to pick on CFEclipse?

Is ColdFusion Builder a better product?

I don’t think a white paper is going to answer that question. CFEclipse is available to download and install for free. CFBuilder also has a 30 60 day trial version.

Download them both. Try them. Write code. Then make your decision.

And if you like CFEclipse please consider joining our community and help us make it better.

But please don’t take our lunch money.

The community weighs in:

• Charlie Griefer – “On ColdFusion Builder vs CFEclipse and the Sky Falling“
• Nicholas Tunney “Adobe can have my lunch money”
• Stephen Moretti  “ColdFusion Community Rumbles in the Jungle”
• Lola J. Lee Beno  “A Comment on the Recent Controversy” (this is a good one)
  

This is the holy grail of lazy typing! Basically it’s a plugin available for a host of popular editors.  And while they don’t mention Eclipse specifically they do mention Aptana.  Digging around on their wiki I found these helpful instructions:

1. Install EclipseMonkey using update site: http://download.eclipse.org/technology/dash/update (you can skip this step if you have Aptana installed)
2. Create top-level project in your current Eclipse workspace, name it, for example, zencoding
3. Create scripts folder inside newly created project
4. Extract contents of downloaded zip plugin into this folder. The project structure may look like this:



5. Restart Eclipse/Aptana if needed

I did this on my vanilla Eclipse/CFEclipse/Aptana install and after a restart it worked!

I popped open a .cfm file and typed the following and then  clicked on the Scripts > Zen-Coding > Expand Abbreviation menu.

td*5

As I had seen that in some of the example and it immediately spit out

<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>

You can easily add more tags, ids/classes, etc. That is a very simple example.  There is a ton more stuff it can do:

Current features of abbreviation engine

• ID and CLASS attributes: div#page.section.main.
• Custom attributes: div[title], a[title="Hello world" rel], td[colspan=2].
• Element multiplication: li*5 will output <li> tag five times.
• Item numbering with $ character: li.item$*3 will output <li> tag three times, replacing $ character with item number.
• Multiple ‘$’ characters in a row are used as zero padding, i.e.: li.item$$$ ? li.item001
• Abbreviation groups with unlimited nesting: div#page>(div#header>ul#nav>li*4>a)+(div#page>(h1>span)+p*2)+div#footer. You can literally write a full document markup with just a single line.
• div tag name can be omitted when writing element starting from ID or CLASS: #content>.section is the same as div#content>div.section.

It’s open source so extending it to support .cfm would be an interesting possibility!

The only drawback so far is some of the keyboard shortcuts don’t work in Eclipse but they are easily changed (see wiki).

With a ton of syntax shortcuts luckily there are several cheat-sheets available as well. But I can see this being a huge timesaver.  While I can mimic some of this with snippets and AutoHotKey – the dynamic nature of this plugin makes those pale in comparison.

Learn more: http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/

Documentation is now on my wiki:  VirtualBox and ColdFusion 9

What will you end up with? A ‘virtual’ server running Apache/ColdFusion 9/MySQL.  Using VirtualBox’s shared directories you can access your code on the guest system.  This seemed to be the most simple and flexible way to configure things.   In my example I’m sharing the CFEclipse workspace directory but if you are using something different it should be easy to adjust to your configuration.

You could certainly run a GUI version of Ubuntu and install an IDE so you would have a self-contained development environment but with this example I wanted to create a system I could use at work and at home for various projects but not necessarily share the code and settings between them.

If you try this and run into any issues with the documentation – please contact me with corrections!

At work we have a LOT of spaghetti code…  weird indenting, mixed case tags, etc.  With the new code formatter in CFEclipse getting this cleaned up is a matter of a few keystrokes!

Format Source - New in CFEclipse 1.3.5

The mixed case tags really drive me nuts as well and I’ve kept Homesite installed because it can easily swap case on tags.  I asked Denny about this (Denny is one of our awesome CFEclipse developers) and he added an experimental ‘change case’ feature!  Woot!

Change Case Option - New in CFEclipse 1.3.5

It doesn’t work with cfscript but most of the older code I work with was probably written before the cfscript was introduced so it isn’t a huge deal.

See this list for more new features in the CFEclipse 1.3.5 release.

I’m using CFEclipse and editing the XML files using Aptana’s XML editor.

My first thought was I could use the Outline view but that didn’t give me anything useful:

Aptana XML Editor - Default Outline View

Digging in the Aptana preferences however turned up this GEM:

Aptana > Editors > XML

“Tag attributes to show in outline view”

By default this is set to ‘id’.  I added ‘name’ (it accepts a comma delimited list) and viola! It now shows my fuseactions in the Outline view:

Outline View Showing Name Attribute

I think CFBuilder is using Aptana under the hood so I would imagine this may work there as well.