FAQ – CFEclipse Plugin

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About CFEclipse

What is CFEclipse?

CFEclipse is a plugin to the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment to assist you in writing ColdFusion code (CFML or CFScript).

Where can I get CFEclipse?

http://cfeclipse.org

So its an IDE, how is that different to an editor like HomeSite?

CFEclipse has a range of features not found in a normal editor.

So its an IDE, but different to HomeSite - is it like Dreamweaver then?

It depends on how you use Dreamweaver. If you use Dreamweaver for HTML features then you will be disappointed in CFEclipse. CFEclipse is for people who spend most of their time writing CFML (or CFScript) code.

Is it a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver?

No, CFEclipse is for ColdFusion developers who mostly write code and are normally heavy users of CFCs and UDFs, rather than HTML or JavaScript?. However, Eclipse has useful plugins (like WTP) that can help you with those two.

What does it do that HomeSite doesn't do?

Features it gets from the Eclipse platform:
- Runs on all 3 major operating systems (Linux, MacOS and Windows).
- Supports revision control systems such as SVN and CVS in a natural and well integrated way.
- Includes Ant which can automate many of your everyday tasks.
- Supports many other third-party plugins

How does CFEclipse make me more productive?

Wizards for common tasks such as creating a CFC.
Code Insight
Code Folding
Snippets for common coding tasks
Task List
Tag Completion
Syntax Highlighting
Also see: OtherUsefulPlugins

Adobe Bolt

What is Bolt?

Bolt is the codename for the new commercial Adobe ColdFusion? IDE (also based on Eclipse). Bolt is currently still under development. More info can be found on the Adobe Labs page: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Bolt

When Bolt is released - will CFEclipse go away?

Mark Drew has a blog post: Is CFEclipse Dead? that covers the future development of CFEclipse.

How is Bolt different than CFEclipse?

Since Bolt is still under development - we don't currently know exactly what features the IDE will have when released. See the Adobe Labs page for Bolt for more info.

Was the CFEclipse team involved with the development of Bolt?

Adobe has consulted Mark Drew during the development of Bolt.

How Do I…

Intall CFEclipse

You 'install' CFEclipse from within the Eclipse IDE. You might consider using the 'WTP all in one' Eclipse version from http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/downloads/drops/R2.0/R2.0200706260303/ as it has a few extra bits like CSS and HTML editing and CFEclipse will drop right into it.

Contribute or Help Out With CFEclipse Development?

Check out the this page to learn how you can give back to the CFEclipse project. We can always use help!

Preview a page?

CFEclipse supports this by pressing F5(?). Make sure you have your mappings configured correctly first so CFEclipse knows what the URL for the file is.

Turn off the print margin? (vertical line on right side of editor window)

In 1.3.5 this was turned on by default. It is easy to disable.

Window > Preferences > CFEclipse > Editor - Uncheck the "Show print margin" option.

Right-click on a .cfm file in Windows Explorer and have it open in CFEclipse?

Quick answer - you can't. Eclipse (and therefore CFEclipse) was designer around 'projects' and not around single file operations. Mark Drew has a good blog entry explaining this behavior.

Is there a pop-up tag editor in CFEclipse that is vaguely like CFS / HS?

Yes, click on a tag then right-click and select Edit This Tag. You'll get a dialogue box with all of the attributes of the tag that you can edit and save.

Turn OFF tag insight

Annoyed by the dialogs that pop up as you add new tags? You can configure the delay by editing the delay insight value. Set it to a high value: 999 (time is in milliseconds).

Turn ON tag insight

Make sure you insight delay (see above) is set to an appropriate value.
You may also invoke insight by holding down the CTRL key while hitting the space bar.
See Troubleshooting tips if tag insight is still not working.

Work with RDS?

Not by itself, but if you install the ColdFusion plugins that ship with Flex Builder (even from the trial version of Flex Builder) then this feature works well with CFEclipse.

!ColdFusion 8 Extensions for Eclipse - This collection of plugins adds the ColdFusion 8 code debugger, code wizards, RDS capabilities and more to Adobe Flex Builder or Eclipse.

Work with FTP / without a project ?

Yes, just open up the File Explorer view and click on the arrow at the top to enter your FTP server details.

CFEclipse also supports SFTP and many other remote file access protocols.

Also see OtherUsefulPlugins

Use CF Unit or the CF Framework Explorer?

See the section on installing extra plugins

View a file in split screen (like in CFStudio)?

You can view the same file in the top editor and in the bottom editor (this isn't a true 'split view' but is as close as you can get in Eclipse):

with a file open, right click on its tab and select "new editor"
take the new tab and drag it all the way to the bottom of your screen Also see Split Screen In Eclipse

Enable ColdFusion 8 syntax dictionaries?

You simply need to download the new dictionary files - more info here

Enable line numbers?

Enabling line numbers is a two part process.

Setup my default browser?

You can set up two different browsers for quickly viewing code

Modify or add keyboard shortcuts?

To learn about existing shortcuts or to define your own - see the key bindings page

Turn on the CFEclipse toolbar (like HomeSite)?

The CFEclipse Toolbar Menu provides tools which can be used to quickly and easily accomplish ColdFusion tasks.

Disable the CFML Editor's contributions to the workbench toolbar?

The CFML Editor commands that appear in the workbench toolbar can only be disabled by editing the org.cfeclipse.cfml plug-in manifest file (plugin.xml). You can use Eclipse to edit the manifest file by selecting File->Open File... from the main menu. Navigate into wherever you have Eclipse installed, and then into plugins/org.cfeclipse.cfml_<version>. Open plugin.xml, and then find the extension point org.eclipse.ui.editorActions. Finally, comment out or delete the toolbarPath attribute from each of the <action> sub elements.

Use snippets?

Information on how to create and use snippets can be found here.

Convert my existing Dreamweaver snippets?

Converting your existing DW snippets is easy - see this guide.

Convert my existing Homesite snippets?

Converting your existing Homesite snippets is a two step process - first convert to Dreamweaver - then import into CFEclipse: see this guide.

Work with [SnipEx] servers?

Please see the list on the main [SnipEx] page

Uninstall or disable to CFEclipse plugin?

Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration
Expand Eclipse SDK > C:\eclipse
Right click on "CFEclipse (including CFUnit and Frameworks) 1.3.x.x

There should be a choice to 'disable' and 'uninstall'.

Use the DocShare feature in Eclipse to share editing

See the Eclipse site for an explanation on DocShare
CFEclipse 1.3.3.x adds support for shared editing

Support

Where do I go for support?

The best place for support is the MailingLists

Known Issues

See the KnownIssues page for workarounds to common problems.

I've found a bug! What now?

Don't panic! Before emailing the mailing list - grab your towel and visit: ReportingBugs

I still have issues - what next?

First try starting Eclipse with the -clean switch

If you have a 1.4 JRE installed, it might be the default, in which case you can override this by editing eclipse.ini in your Eclipse install directory. Add a line starting '-vm ' then the path to your Java 1.5 or greater JRE install to the file, as in
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
-vm /opt/jre1.6.0_02-i386/
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx256m
Note that the -vm arg must be before the -vmargs (if any). See also CommandLine.

If you continue to experience problems - send an email to the MailingLists and see if someone can help - see the reporting bugs page on useful information you can provide when asking for help.

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