My CF8 Semi-Permanent Test Drive
Posted by: Jon ClausenLike many other Coldfusion developers, I made my way to the Labs yesterday morning to download the first public beta release of Coldfusion 8. Of course the file kept sitting there on my desktop for most of the day as I worked up the nerve to install it on my development box.
The Windows XP machine that used to be my primary development box has taken a back seat to my Macbook Pro as my main machine. The Windows box now functions as a local SVN, file and database server, but I've gone so far as to disable CF from even starting at boot. A BookEndz docking station allows me to work comfortably at my desk or take projects on the go without the hassles of synchronizing files between machines.
On the Macbook Pro, I've had CF7 running in Multi-server configuration on top of JRun4. All of this is connected in to Apache through mod_jrun. Each site is set up with thier own Virtual Host file as well as a modified local hosts file so that the setup for each site I work on as closely mirrors the production environments they will be deployed to (i.e. - "cfblog.localhost" points to the files for "cfblog.com"). Apache shares the same webroot as my Coldfusion instance as well. I've been very happy with this setup and it makes deploying changes to a staging environment or a live site a breeze. All of the shared paths and custom settings between Apache and Coldfusion made me a bit nervous with the idea of installing Coldfusion 8 on my machine. It is a beta, though, and the only way to really get a feel for the potential and pitfalls of new software is to actually use it for a length of time.
So last night I dove in. My first plan was to deploy CF8 as an EAR file, allowing me to switch between server versions while sharing the same webroot. The idea was that I could comment or un-comment the correct block in Apache's httpd.conf file and restart to switch between versions of Coldfusion. If only things were so easy...
Once I ran the installer for J2EE deployment of CF8 as an EAR file I was unable to start the JRun admin to register the new server. The root cause of this, I believe, seemed to be that on the developer version I was unable to change the name of the CF8 instance from "cfusion" which is the default and also is the named instance of CF7 on this machine. I'm not sure why, but the form input on that step of the installation was disabled completely.
Plan B came next. I then fully backed up and then renamed my /Applications/JRun4 directory and my httpd.conf file and began the process of installing CF8 in Multi Server configuration - basically telling the installer that JRun wasn't already installed on the machine. This way was a bit more permanent and more of a pain to restore CF7, but it could be done fairly easily if the need arose.
The installation process went smoothly and, since I was feeling like living dangerously anyway, I allowed the Coldfusion installer to setup the connectors for Apache - knowing full well it would overwrite my existing files (hey, I had backups right?).
The installation of Coldfusion itself was flawless (a welcome change from installing CF7 on an Intel Mac), however I had to tweak a couple of lines in my httpd.conf file afterwards to get Apache to start - cleanup from my custom configuration, not from any problem with the CF installer. I also noticed that he global aliases for the /CFIDE which were in my httpd.conf file were missing post-install. I had to re-add the following lines to make the CFIDE directory an Alias (a.k.a Virtual Directory for IIS/Windows folks).
#Alias for CFIDE directory Alias /CFIDE "~/Sites/CFIDE" Alias /cfide "~/Sites/CFIDE"
Since I had to install CF8 like it had never been installed on this machine before, that meant that all of my datasources and mappings had to be recreated manually - a bummer but much easier than on CF7 since drivers for Postgres 8 and MySQL 5 are natively available.
For today, at least, CF8 is the only version of Coldfusion running on my Macbook. This evening's project will be to try deploying an instance of CF7 on this new install of JRun in case I need to switch back. For now, though, I guess I'll just live dangerously...
My initial impressions of Coldfusion 8 are extremely positive. I'm going to spend some time today with CF8 as my primary development server today. Updates to follow...
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