CF DeBugger / Eclipse Thoughts from an Eclipse Newbie

Ok, so I sat through Charlie Arehart's excellent CFUG presentation lat night on the new CF8 debugger and Fusion Debug and decided it was time to get off my duff and get going on working with a step debugger. I cannot even count the number of times I have downloaded the FusionDebug trial, only to get too busy to install and work with it.

While not a CF newbie, (I have worked with it since v4 and been using RDS since v5), I am a complete Eclipse dummy. But, spurred on by Charlie... I ventured forth. Here are some thoughts on what I encountered. Maybe they'll hep the next newbie. After spending most of the day plowing through tutorials, blogs, and livedocs, I finally got the d@#n set up complete. Here are the obstacles I had to jump over to get it going....

1) Get the Right software to use CF8 debugger, CFEclipse, and Fusion Debug are NOT all the same thing. But they can and do play very nicely in same sandbox (Eclipse), each bringing their own goodies to the mix. Unfortunately, Eclipse is a very large sandbox and there are a wide variety of 'versions' available. I first installed and tried to use the IDE version (on an XP computer accessing CF8 via RDS on one of my dev severs). I never could find a 'breakpoint button', never could get my page to load and run and basically wondered why my setup didn't look at thing like Charlie's. Going back to replay the CFUG, I noticed he was using the SDK version. And so were all the other blogers I read ...

Installation was easy. Simply extract the files into a directory of your choise. Being anal about program files. I placed the files in Program files > Eclipse dir and created a shortcut to my desktop.

2) Seek the Gurus Ben Forta's Getting STarted guide was a tremendous help. If I had only found it earlier, I would have had an eaiser go it.

Charlie Arehart's Blogs and Eclipse Blogger Compilation and Fusion Debug are all a great help.

And don't forget Fullasagoog... Tons of good info and helps, but I tend to digress and get completely offtrack there

3) Use Eclipse Plugin Capability to add the extensions Download the Coldfusion 8 Debugger extensions for Eclipse, extract, and then in Eclipse, using Help > Software Updates > Find and Install > Search for New Features > ..and go to your unzipped local folder will install the CF8 extesion.

Using the same Software Update > you can find and install directly from the CFEclipse.org site.

4) Persevere through the RDS Woes I have an office with 2 CF servers. One running CFMX7, and one running CF8. I use RDS to connect to whichever server I am using. I use Dreamweaver to connect via RDS daily, but could not get the RDS connection to work in Eclipse. To Do this: Window > Preferences > Coldfusion > RDS Configuration to open the RDS.

If you are running CF on your local computer (and not running is as a J2EE app), then there is already a localhost setting there. Simply enter your admin pw (and username if need be.). IF you are connecting to CF running on IIS, you enter either the IP address, or the servername, AND port 80, not the port the CF administrator's debugger setting tells you (mine defaults to 5005).

5) Plan to Climb the Learning Curve Getting the software configured and linked into your CF server is most of the hurdle. but take the time to read through the blogs, and watch the video tutorials on how to run and manage your code. Feature like being able to change variable values on the fly during execution, watching variable and setting changes while the code is running make the time spent worthwhile (or so Charlie says).

So, I am ready to get started. And the day spent working on this rather than on paid client's projects I ope will pay off with increased productivity.