what is the correct version of Eclipse for Coldfusion?

Question

Hi Usually when one wants to create a new file in the Eclipse IDE , Java, Javascript, Colsdfusion PHP etc are provided as the options for the new files.

I recently downloaded Eclipse for Coldfusion 8 and excecuted the file "software/dw/java/europa/J2EE-SDK-Europa-33-win32.zip" .

Now when I want to create a New File "only JAVA " option is available. There is no coldfusion or HTML!

So can any one provide me the Exact/correct link for Codfusion related Eclipse? (On the Eclipse website there are many Eclipse related downloads but I am not sure which one is specific for Coldfusion.)

Answer 1

There's CFEclipse, a free, open-source Eclipse plug-in for working with CFML. And of course there's Adobe's ColdFusion Builder, a commercial product that works as either a plug-in for an existing Eclipse installation, or as a full stand-alone product (with Eclipse already baked in).

CFEclipse 1.3.6, the current stable version, works with Eclipse 3.4.x or 3.5.x. Here's the CFEclipse wiki.

The stated Eclipse versions required for ColdFusion Builder are 3.4.2 or 3.5. Here's Adobe's requirements page.

If you're using one of these as a plug-in and you don't need a lot of the other Eclipse features, the J2EE version of Eclipse is probably overkill (it's the biggest package). You can try out a more minimal Eclipse install, then update and add plug-ins as you need them. Try the Eclipse Platform Binary, for example.

Answer 2

There's also Adobe's ColdFusion Builder IDE specially created for this purpose. It proposes some features not available in CFEclipse, but not free (though there's a trial version available).

In addition to Ken's answer please note that you can already use preview builds of CFEclipse with latest Eclipse 3.6 Helios. I am using this configuration on daily basis and it is pretty stable and more efficient than previous version for me.

If you will expierience problems with preview builds, feel free to post them into the CFEclipse groups, developers usually react pretty quickly.

One more hint for you. Sometimes after installing the plugin via Add Sofware further updates do not work correcly. I've experienced this issue few times so it can be useful to know the solution.

To fix this check the Preferences > Install/Update > Available Software Sites. If needed entry missing -- create it manually using the same update URL as for installation.

Also there's an Eclipse-based version of Adobe CF manual available, see this help page for details.

Hope this helps.