ColdFusion has integrated debugging features, and has for a long time. Most CF developers rely heavily on ColdFusion’s ability to append debug output to generated pages, and tags like and and are also used when debugging code. cfstat and PerfMon integration provide some visibility into the CF engine. ColdFusion Studio also features an interactive debugger, a more traditional style debugger which allows for breakpoints and watchpoints and step-by-step execution and real time expression evaluation. Most developers never use the interactive Studio debugger, some find it too hard to configure, others find it flaky, and most find it to be overkill for script type development. C or Java applications, for example, needs interactive debugging because of the potential complexity of such applications. But Web based apps are collections of single pages, execution may be started at arbitrary points, pages may be tested individually, and code can be edited on the fly. As such, interactive debugging never really caught on.
So here’s the question: How would you like ColdFusion debugging to ideally work? What type of debugging would you like, and how would you expect to use it? Do you want an IDE, and if yes what would it do? What visibility do you want into the CF space, and how would you like to gain that visibility? I know this is an open ended question, but if you have any opinions on the subject (I know that you do), please do share.
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