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Jim Priest - 29/Feb/08 08:17 AM
FYI - Just to add this for search - ColdFusion is now referred to as one word - not two.
I would be glad to dedicate assistance in seeing this happen also. I am not sure how we define "it shouldn't take him long..." but this is something that is a very good investment. It is to bad those outside the membership cannot vote on this. From what I understand in the (and I have no first person access to the data) number one feature being requested in the CF9 surveys is a full featured IDE for CF.
Hey, while we are on the subject. How about Aptana adding in "robust ANT support" with a all in one installer. While I'm in favor of ColdFusion support, I'm more in favor of an alliance with the CFEclipse project rather than dividing CFML support between two camps. CFEclipse has already made great strides in supporting ColdFusion development in the Eclipse ecosystem, don't reinvent the wheel work to improve the one you have.
While CFEclipse provides a lot of good CF-specific features, it is lacking in general IDE functionality. That is not to take anything away from Mark Drew and the rest of the CFE crew. They have done a great job with very limited resources compared to Aptana. My original suggestion was to merge the two. I asked Mark Drew to look into it many months ago but haven't heard anything about it since then. I know that at one point there were conversations between Mark and Ingo - you can probably find references to that conversation within the Aptana forums.
My goal is purely the best CF support available, not to trash CFEclipse which I use every day. The CFE crew has been contacted by Aptana and have not responded. Hey, that seems great to me also... but it's time we got the show on the road.
 Perhaps they will get inspired to move on this again and join in the effort if it gets started without them. Their help is welcome and the work they did is appreciated but it has been stagnate for months (over half a year) now.
Like Daemach, no fault in CFE here. I use it daily when doing CF. It does what it does OK, yet several things could be improved, extended and such. Yet, it's past time to have a better IDE and Aptana seems like a great fit. Eclipse is a wonderful product, hands down the best Java IDE and the pluggable environment allows you to extend the IDE to support anything imaginable, except ColdFusion. Mark did a wonderful job initially adding CF support to Eclipse, however the codebase is rarely updated, doesn't support to full language, is completely buggy and most important of all is he refuses to listen to his users and is only interested in developing CFEclipse to support his own style of development.
I have come to put up with all the bugs and annoyances of CFEclipse, because of the other time saving plugins (datatools platform, coldfusion debugger, subclipse. mylyn, ant) and only having to know one editor for my Java and CF development, but I am annoyed daily with CFEclipse and Mark has no interest in fixing the product. Currently the only feature of Aptana I use is the synchronization and thus am not a paid licensed user. If Aptana supported CF nicely and we were no longer forced to use CFE, I would gladly remove Dreamweaver from my entire development team computers and replace them with Aptana Pro licenses. Under one condition of course, it is not a joint effort with Mark Drew and he has no say in the direction of the plugin's future. I mean no disrepect to him, as he has spent countless time and effort to develop the plugin and make it freely available to the public, we just need a second and better option. Aptana has great support for other tag based languages, it would be great to see that extended to CFML. In fact, I was going to start extending the HTML editor this weekend to support CFML tags. It may not be the best route, but atleast I can ditch CFE then. Since Aptana has already added support for PHP and Ruby, as well as AIR and iPhone, CFML should not be outside of scope. If this gets implemented, you have my thanks in advance. Hopefully Aptana could take what has already been done in CFEclipse and simply polish the rough edges. While there are things that don't work in CFE - there is a lot that does work well.
Despite Stewart's opinion I think it would be a shame to throw away all the hard work that has gone into CFEclipse... I'd also hope anything done for CFML is vendor neutral. With the recent open-souce Blue Dragon announcement having a good editor for both BD and ColdFusion will be important to the future of CFML. I would also buy the pro version if CFML support was included. I'm trying to learn Eclipse/CFEclipse at home, and I'm using Dreamweaver CS3 at work. I'd love to dump dreamweaver, and I've found CFEclipse hard to master.
Eclipse is harder to learn. Aptana has more functional projects and FTP for example and that is one reason I would like to see them provide a great solution for CF. The code done in CFEclipse is nice and if the core team ever had time to get to the project it would be a consideration. I seem to remember a project member stating that he didn't think the projects would mix to well and he was worried about the "commercial aspect" of Aptana. I don't have that fear and perhaps they are over that issue also. Yet, when was the last time any features were added to CFEclipse? When is the last upgrade and how about before that. It is stagnate and not visibly going anywhere at this time.
I want a great CF IDE. It was told me that is the number 1 feature request for CF9. Can you believe that the community has gotten to the point that is so strong a request? I can... Aptana... will you be our hero? Im not an Eclipse guy, I still use Dreamweaver but I could switch if I find something better out there (I just use Eclipse because of the bean generator Adobe made for it)
I'm not sure why you guys think CFEclipse is stagnant. There was a checkin in the code repository on Feb 22, 2008. The last public release was less than a year ago (July 2007). Just because there aren't public releases every other week or so (like some other Eclipse plugins I know of...) doesn't mean the project is stagnant. It means the project is more mature. ;-p
P.S. Seriously now, I have no problems with Aptana adding CF support. I think it would be a great idea--especially if they were able to combine resources with Mark Drew and the CFEclipse team. But I think this whole "knock CFEclipse" attitude that's forming in this thread is undeserved. AFAIK, Mark has devoted much of his own personal time to this project and is receiving nothing in return. We should be grateful to him and thank him for his time, not belittle him with "CFEclipse is stagnant" posts. OK... let's consider your concerns Richard.
1. Code checked in to SVN... so did you expect that to be working code or what? Is there a new deliverable? I personally talked to Mark just this week and he said he didn't suggest any updates due. Actually more of a status on hold for now. 2. Mark has received for his work. No not an ongoing "income" but he speaks at conferences and gets in for free. He has got sponsorships that include lisc. to software. Some sponsorships for supporting CFEclipse and other he used personally to fund attend CFUnited in the US. I helped push that financial support so before you kick at me realize I have been working to get Mark working. (NOTE: Mark isn't willing to at this time commit to the project as an his income, and that is OK. I proposed that solution and raising funds... but it isn't his vision and that is OK.) 3. Adobe keeps talking about it... but not building it. (Not that my opinion is that is OK, but it is their prerogative and not ours.) 4. CFEclipse is many things... it is not others. People choose Dreamweaver over CFEclipse. Come on... we don't have to knock it. DW isn't a developer tool by nature. 5. The project is mature? Is that why the code hinting is still broke in many areas? Mark has on his agenda updates to several issues I mentioned to him... but he doesn't have time to work on them. As far as my opinion of Mark goes that is OK. He isn't in debt to work on it for free. BOTTOM LINE:
BTW... I use CFEclipse. I have walked a mile in the shoes as the old proverb says. My belief is that there is not a vision for a better CF IDE with someone that has time and resources to make it happen. Everyone who has contributed so far (be it DW updates or CFE) your work is greatly appreciated. The good work you have done does not mean there isn't more work needed. Hope that answers your concerns Richard. No problem with Mark. Just want a better product. If Mark had more time I would be out there trying to raise more money for his time. I would ask if you find the product what you need... have you donated? I would ask that of all of us. What have you done to say thanks to Mark? He has been a hero... but it's OK if we take it to the next level while he is busy. John,
Apparently you don't understand what ;-p means... Well - I would say if you want to see change bugging Mark isn't the way to move things forward...
There are over 400 people on the CFEclipse mailing list. Yet only 31 votes for Aptana support here. If we want it we need to show Aptana (or whoever) there is a big enough demand. Spread the word. I also wonder if Aptana would be open to a 'pay for this feature' deal similar to what they have at Codeweavers and their 'Pledged' apps list. http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/toplists/ If all 400 people on the mailing list chipped in $25 that's $10,000! Why is it when we talk about CF IDE we get stuck on Mark? Only one guy said in his opinion that Mark wasn't interested. The rest of the comments were all positive and raving his excellent effort. What are you talking about Jim?
I agree on chipping in... and my money is there if someone can put the time in who knows Java and Eclipse development. I am sure we can find someone neutral to collect and hold the money for certain goals. The start of CFEclipse was stellar. There was a down period and then Mark took the reigns and rescued the project. He made it stable enough. You can count me in for a bigger portion. (And don't need to put my name on a wall anywhere.) Now the IDE isn't a one man when he gets to it project. Let's quit making this about Mark. Here's what we need to support CF Eclipse. (or an new IDE) A new better site is nice. It's not an update or a bug fix release to the product. Let's quit pressuring Mark and get start pushing the "Board of Directors" for CF Eclipse. (Can anyone tell us who that is?) How about someone creates a survey with ratings and such for CFEclipse and see how much the community actually likes it. And put a question in there... compared to DW how do you rate CFE. Compared to ColdFusion Studio .... Let's see if we can get some real answers. Right now we are stagnate with a myth that CFEclipse is mature. (It's more like it's stuck in a useful but immature state is the message people are giving.) AND PLEASE... this is not about Mark. If people feel the IDE is not what they expect it is about the IDE. Saying someone isn't getting anything for work is like saying what do you expect for nothing. It's the worse argument you could give. We work on Open Source software... I can tell you that people don't care how much they pay for it... they expect it to work. If it doesn't work they expect it to be fixed. CF Eclipse either does what people expect and runs without bugs or people expect to look for another solution if it isn't being updated. It's that simple. P.S. There is no "Board of Directors". CFEclipse = Mark. Period.
Adobe did have a very extensive IDE survey up awhile ago but we'll never see the results of that I imagine You say "How about someone". There is no 'someone'. Volunteer. Step up. Otherwise it's not going to get done. I do like your ideas of outlining goals, setting up a poll, etc. Feel free to setup a page on the CFEclipse wiki to collect that info. Jim... could you point to a documentation page that shows me how to set up a survey in the WIKI?
...and, I am not an official member of the CFEclipse team. This would not be an appropriate location for me to post a survey. Someone like me who has campaigned strongly to get support to have more development done at CFEclipse and then to not see it is a point of high frustration. Sean C. did some great work by creating a plugin for CFCUnit... and recently the MXUnit is a good work also. Yet, the bugs and features issues are something that are already provided for on the site. They have Trak. Powers there have taken surveys and at the end of the day... we just aren't getting the same passion to complete the tool as we were expecting in days past. We were expecting a 2.0 version of eclipse well over a year ago. Yes we understand some people dropped the ball. We were explained very well that the IDE team for Eclipse didn't hold the bargin they made with Adobe and Mark alone completed what was done. Yet, the promise of a "FIRST RATE IDE" has not arrived in the CF world. We have the best ( IMO and others ) programming language but comparing to other platforms we fall behind far to many platforms for powerful IDE features. I would gladly pay for a great IDE, with less bugs and more features like Aptana integration... and more than 25$. John John - there is no utility on the CFEclipse wiki to create a survey. There are lots of tools out there to do that however. You could setup a survey and then the community can help spread the link... I wonder if the Adobe survey is online still anywhere - that would be a great place to start and copy what they had... A quick search finds this:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=321RrO9_2fWaP_2bdYMnmF9CuQ_3d_3d I don't see why we couldn't setup the same survey and collect the results ourselves??? Someone could easily replicate this with Ray's "soundings" survey application... In regards to not being a 'team member' - that's irrelevant. The 'team' is the ColdFusion community. My thought was you could create a page on the wiki to organize the information you mentioned: 1. What are the goals? (Roadmap) Regardless if Mark picks this back up or someone from Aptana, Adobe, etc - this information would be great to have organized in one central location. But again, it's not going to happen unless someone steps up and tackles this task. I, like you, want to see a first class IDE for ColdFusion. I don't care if Mark builds it, Adobe, or whoever. I would like to see a free version available in some form or fashion and I'd like it to be vendor neutral. Otherwise I'm open to all options. But like Mark, I have a day job, I have kids, and I have my own agenda - so the time I have to dedicate to CFEclipse is very limited. I would like to see the transparent results of such a survey also. My thoughts are we should enhance the survey enough to answer some of the community questions also.
John - Ray has kindly setup a survey for us to use... I've added the questions which appeared on the Adobe survey.
What additional questions would you like to see on the survey??? If you'd like you can contact me directly via my blog: http://www.thecrumb.com/contact Positive - this might give CFEclipse more time to spend on other items like the cool frameworks editor and the test runner specific to ColdFusion but I would be afraid of losing voice in an Aptana world. Neg - some Aptana Features have become obtrusive within Eclipse. Also Aptana still has separate editors.for html verses CSS. see ticket #
CFML IDE Survey available here:
http://www.blogcfc.com/soundings/survey.cfm?id=2B1EB770-19B9-E658-9D6046279001BCB9 This is to collect information on what we (the community) want to see in a CFML IDE. I will post the results of the survey once we collect enough meaningful data... And this data will be available to anyone who wants to either support CFEclipse or roll their own IDE. I will gladly pay for pro if they add cf support.
With the limited resources and developers its difficult to dictate which direction to go with a cfml ide. But, I'd rather see CFEclipse officially supported by Eclipse as an incubation project, than have Aptana merge CFEclipse and run it under a pay to play license. With OpenBD around the corner, the community, now more than ever, needs a good and FREE as in beer cfml ide. And CFEclipse provides that now already. If Aptana thinks there is a market for a cfml ide, then let them go ahead and build one - open source or otherwise; but don't kill CFEclipse.
I am wondering what the status of this issue is. It appeared in my inbox today but no idea why it showed up via email today.
Sorry John. Some idiot spammer decided to make a run through our issue tracker to get links to whatever useless stuff he's peddling, and that triggered the email to you. There is no change as of yet on the issue this ticket is really about.
I am a heavy user of CFEclipse and I'm greatly appreciate of all of the hard work that Mark Drew has put into it, for free. (So appreciative that I've donated a few hundred dollars to him over the past few years, in an attempt to motivate him to do more work on it.)
Anyone who works in CF has an itch that hasn't been scratched since the golden days of CFStudio (RIP). CFEclipse goes some way towards scratching this itch, but certainly not all of the way. Like other users, I would happily fork out for a good commercial CF IDE if that would scratch the itch - but none is available. Aptana would indeed be a fantastic platform upon which to base an Eclipse-based CF IDE. It's got lots of great features, and many of them work very smoothly. It doesn't support CF code insight or colouring, but a solution may be closer than many of you realise! Aptana has a Generic Text Editor, which allows users to create lexers for their language. So - all that stands between us and (at least basic) support for ColdFusion in Aptana, is for someone to create an Aptana .LXR file for Coldfusion. It's not that hard. No programming required - just one teency, weency lxr file... ;-P An (out-dated) guide on how to do it is here: And more info about the structural elements is here: I bet whoever puts together that lexer file will be very popular! I'll put it on my (long, sorry!) list of side projects to look at - if anyone else is interested in looking at it, please, do and post about it here... |
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Enhancement
Reviewed
Major
Cold Fusion support
