I know that I've done a post on copying files with Ant, but I really want to take this further and into more detail. To save my fingers a lot of the text below is taken from my first post as moving and copying directories/files is a similar command in principle.

I also want to mention that I am running all my Ant tasks via Eclipse and not the command line. If there is a demand to know how to install Ant and run it from the command line I'll do that post separately. At this point I'm assuming you've got Eclipse and you know you way around it enough? Before we do begin you will need to ensure that you can see the Console 'View', you can get to this by going to:

[More]

First off I wanna say that I'm running all my Ant task via Eclipse and not the command line. If there is a demand to know how to install Ant and run it from the command line I'll do that post separately.

So, what is Ant? Well to steal a quote from Mark Drew, think of Ant as .bat files on steroids. You use XML to describe a set of commands to run a whole range of tasks to do anything from SVN/CVS checkouts, unit tests, FTP, emails, sql, moving/copying folders/files generally just name it!

In this guide I want to cover creating a build.xml file and moving files/folders. I'm assuming you've got Eclipse and you know you way around it enough. Before we do begin you will need to ensure that you can see the Console View.

[More]

If you are ever having trouble with Eclipse or any plugin such as CFEclipse you can always view the "Eclipse error log".

The best way to view these is through Eclipse it self, to see the this goto:

[More]

One of the cool things about CFEclipse is that it's built on Eclipse ... just incase you didn't know that. But with this also means that across all my perspectives (perspectives for non Eclipser's are the equivalent to seperates IDE's) you share shortcuts.

[More]

I've been adding some performance variables to my Eclipse setup and have recently learnt that on the Mac you can use an Eclipse.ini file for the settings instead of the [non-standard] Info.plist file.

To open the Eclipse.ini file goto Eclipse.app >> right-click >> Show Package Contents Then navigate to /Contents/MacOS and use a text editor to open the file.

Note: A single VM argument ("-vmargs") specified in Info.plist will cause all other VM arguments in the eclipse.ini to be ignored.

So far from my trawlings around the web one consensus I've seen is that to improve performance you should give the VM as much ram as you can spare and and set your min and max values to the same amounts to avoid resizing.

So for reference I have added the following startup variables in my ini file:

The first 4 setting change how the memory is managed.

Line 5 should reduce your startup time. This parameter turns off bytecode verification. I'm not a Java expert (so please someone jump in if I am wrong) but you should only set this if you know your plugins work fine. In essence this checks for the Java language rules for safety and the code may not have been produced by a known-to-be trustworthy Java compiler meaning that you could end up crashing Eclipse as your plugin might violate access restrictions etc.

If you have any more changes/updates let me know!

I've just had a comment in my CFUnit guide about not being able to find the feature in CFEclipse. This isn't because it is hidden within CFE, but as with all beta's some features/functions never make the final cut. Sadly this time the CFunit feature was one of them.

Don't worry though. It is in the pipeline, and will be coming!

Mark Drew has finally announced that CFEclipse 1.3 is here. Not only do we have an updated editor, but the the site has been radically updated as well.

Start downloading now!

In case no one has noticed I am kind of starting a Rough Guide Series. These guides are made the way I like guides to be. They don't go in-depth and throw everything at you! They just do enough to get you up and walking and give you an understanding of the topic. For example the ColdSpring series were done with this in mind. I just wanted to help get the idea to finally click and see what it is good for. They seemed to of done well from looking at the views and they even got a mention in the CFWeekly(cheers guys, keep up the good work!). Along with this I will also offer links/resources to carry on where I leave off.

What will I be covering next.

[More]

Originally I wanted to title this "Last night Eclipse saved my life" but decided that didn't really explain this mini guide all to well.

First off, if you are not on Eclipse than you probably don't know about two great features, "Compare with local history", and "Replace with local history". In brief, Eclipse saves all previous version of your file(s) you are working on. So with a simple click you can "Compare"/"Replace" your current version of a document to the original one you started working on 2 days ago! Think of it as a mini source control without the checking in.out. If you want to know more about these features go to Robert Blackburn write up in Fusion Authority.

What does "Going beyond Eclipse's local file compare/replace" mean then?

[More]

As you might of heard CFUnit is now integrated into the beta build of CFEclipse. To bring you up-to-speed about CFUnit(incase you didn't know); CFUnit is a unit testing framework for ColdFusion, modelled after the popular JUnit framework. By building test units while creating your app you can ensure that your methods (cffunctions) and components overall behave as expected. If you are totally new to CFUnit you might want to check out the references at the end of this post.

So who is this guide for. Well nearly anyone who wants to get started with CFUnit within CFEclipse. For reference I am working on Eclipse 3.2.1 with CFEclipse 1.3 Beta RC2 1.2.9.7 and im gonna assume you've got both on your sytem. This guide doesn't really go into all the benefits of CFUnit (though by the end of this you should be able to seem them) so if you want more details afterwards check out the points of reference at the end.

[More]

Then let someone know. I've seen a few blogs over the last year or two like Michael Sharman's that detail issues with CFEclipse, explaining why it just doesn't work for them and generally ends with something like "back to [insert homesite or dreamweaver here] for me".

I know that when I see a blog entry like this before even posting a comment the first thing I do is check out the mailing list to see if they have left a thread there explaining their issues. Most of the time I don't find a post and there lies the rub. Needless to say though that without finding out why they have a bug or how to fix it they just post a blog entry on how CFE just "doesn't work". This isn't the first time this has happened and probably won't be the last.

[More]

This is more of a case of just letting everyone know as to prevent head butting against the wall and going back through RegEx books.

I was trying to replace a load of commas with newlines via the find/replace using regex a task I thought was simple:

Find: "," Replace with: "\n"

All that happend was an "n" being inserted. I tried"

Find: "," Replace with: "\\n"

This inserted "\n".

[More]

WooHoo! I've finally got myself a ticket to my first CF conference, the CFDevCon. My ticket is booked along with my room in the Fairfield Hotel for the 9th November 2006.

It looks like it should be a good day with some of the topics covering API's, BlueDragon, CFEclipse and Fusebox. Also quite excited about the footnote on the site saying Starting from 2007 we are planning some much larger conferences covering other technologies such a ASP.NET, Web Services, XML, AJAX, web 2.0 and much more, with tracks teaching you how to leverage these technologies and integrate them with CFML. Watch this space.

[More]

Snippets in CFEclipse (or any IDE) are just a handy feature. But whats even better are the snippet variables. These are a pre-set, built-in list of system available variables available to the snippet.

[More]

If you haven't already seen them Mark Drew has posted some great sets of video tutorials on his site, going through CFEclipse features.

He's also made the videos available via RSS as a Podcast, which is also possible to subscribe to via iTunes by seaching for "MD on CF".

http://markdrew.libsyn.com/rss

I haven't quite checked the EULA about this but at the moment I am running Eclipse 3.2 and Flex is for 3.1 so this is one way to run the CF bits of Flex for Eclipse 3.2.

To access the ColdFusion (RDS support etc) I've manually extracted the CF_FB_Extensions.zip file from the Flex exe. To do this you'll need to download Flex and have a copy of Winzip (or WinRar etc etc).

[More]

Well I'm, writing this on the train home after battling through the ever so friendly people on the london Underground. I'm coming back from the UKCFUG meeting tonight where the topic was Coldspring(CS) and what it does presented my Mark Drew. This is his part 2 speak after the Model Glue(MG) and Reactor(RC) preso the other month.

Though fairly short (about 60/70 minutes) he covered a lot of ground and answered concisely the question of "What the hell does CS do?"

[More]

Well it finally arrived this morning, I'd actually had forgotten about it - my CFEclipse mouse pad. Like most people I think who use CFE I've been meaning to help out more than just by submitting posts to the mailing list. Plus my old mouse pad was looking rather rough around the edges.

Buy swag now! at http://www.cafepress.com/cfeclipse

It looks like in the ColdFusion Extensions to Flex Builder 2.0 download they have ported the Component Browser functionality over. You can find this by going to Window >> show view >> other >> ColdFusion >> Service Browser.

It's a nice feature but I feel its wasted for a couple of reasons; I'll be honest I never liked the DWMX implementation of this function as having all your functions in one list is just measy. Plus this feature has been in CFE (nightly builds) and personally is a better version - look for Window >> show view >> other >> CFML >> Component Explorer. One of the things I like about CFE's is that it is project based, Adobes version works from your web root and mappings so in there is a lot of junk but it also misses a lot of my folders as I split them out over different IP's. One feature which is nice in the Service Browser though is the view by Access.

Which ever you like, its another tool in your arsenal. My only question is that if Macromedia (Adobe) are supporting CFEclipse development then why not work together on this?

One annoying issue i've had with Eclipse/CFeclipse is that you have to double click the editor tab to maximise/minimise the view. I have just found out that through the shortcut keys you can also do this. It might seem an obvious place to start but i'm sure i looked there ages ago.

To edit the shortcut keys goto winow>preferences>general>keys and look for the command "Maximise Active View of Editor". When you get there you'll see that it uses the shortcut keys ctrl-m (for windows), this of couse is used by CFE for jumping between tags (another handy shortcut i've just learnt today). What i've done is remove the ctrl-m shortcut and replaced it with ctrl-alt-m which as far as i can see isn't used for anything.