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116 Lucee 6 Release Features, Behind-the-Scenes, with Zac Spitzer

By Michaela Light Leave a Comment

Zac Spitzer talks about “Lucee 6 Release Features, Behind-the-Scenes ” in this episode of the ColdFusion Alive podcast with host Michaela Light.

I'm here with Zac Spitzer from the Lucee Association Switzerland along with some other organizations that I'll tell you about later. And we're going to be talking about some exciting breaking news about Lucee six. All the features in that and when you can get your hands on it. And a bit about behind the scenes on what happens in Lucee and how you can best get support from the Lucee folks.”

Show notes

Lucee 6 beta release

The Lucee process and his role

    • Lucee Community Manager
    • Jack of all trades
    • Support
    • Lucee docs (originally by Pix8), Zac speeded it up https://docs.lucee.org/ 
    • Build engineer
      • Log4j fix – upgrade
      • Travis.ci migration to GitHub actions
    • Ticket triage
    • Dev schedulers
    • Facilitate Misha to focus on deep (PM)
    • Help Brad Wood on CommandBox integration
    • Learning Java
    • “Code speaks louder than words”
    • Improving dev workflows 
    • QoQ improvements
    • Extensions dependencies → Lucee Lite

Lucee 6 New features

    • Single context mode
      • Vs current multi-context in Lucee (and one context in ACF)
      • Faster server startup
      • Web sites each have one
    • Json config (from XML)
    • Fixing bad CFML defaults
      • CFLocation AddToken = False is now default
    • Java type UDFs
      • Type = Java
      • Add Java code direct in your CF code!
      • Autowrapping of the Java code
      • Currently Lucee uses OSGI for JARs for dynamic use
    • Subcomponents 
      • Better TryCF.com experience
    • Query of Query
      • Less funky that ACF – more like regular database queries – same semantics 
      • 10x Faster performance (as of 5.3.8) for single table
        • Joins different
      • Future CF functions inside a QoQ query

Prior announced features in Lucee 6

    • Improve the Startup Time < 0.5s
      • Startup with only One Context halves the startup time
      • Removed old cruf for flash etc
      • Webinfo folder outside the webroot – more secure – smaller and faster
        • Pete Freitag Fuseless llamda helped on this
      • Warmenable = 1 to pre-load these folders
    • Better logging eg in deploy log
      • Log leves errors and info ones
    • Improve the Existing Serverless Deployment (JSR 223)
    • Introduce Headless Deployment for AWS Lambda
    • Project Loom – more parallel threads
    • Add Built-In Support for syslog
    • Hibernate Upgrade to version 5.4 (Ortus supported upgrade for better ORM)
    • Web.cfc for website context 
    • Listeners – queries, mail, HTTP progress listener
    • Admin log viewer – aggregates them 
      • His GitHub or ForgeBox
    • Performance analyzer
      • Enable debug logs
      • Thread debugging for parallel code
      • His GitHub or ForgeBox
    • CF distributed lock across a cluster (Redis server)

Future improvements

    • Improved Functionality of Futures and Promises
    • Lockdown Settings for Administrators
    • The Use of Lucee will now be Disguised
    • Individual CFTOKEN or CFID Names
    • Introduction of a Password Vault
    • Quarantine mode
    • Add a Default Log Appender which is the Fallback if not configured.
      • Text file vs DataDog etc
    • Event-Driven Architecture
    • Brand New Native Support for JavaStreams (Luis CDstreams does this)
    • Easy use of Java libraries 
    • We love Lucee

  • NASA Mars web app in Lucee

The Lucee Release cycle

    • Point release schedule
      • Monthly vs stable release
      • Full test on the release
      • 5.3.8 long release
      • 6-month release cycle in future
      • Test library of regression code distributed tests for more stable releases – no regressions (errors in release)
      • Send in pull requests
    • Lucee 6 Announced the 2018 CFCamp in Munich
    • Better version numbering – faster major releases
      • LTS (Long Term Support) for prior version
    • Sprints 

Lucee support tips

    • Search in Google to see if others have solved your problem already
    • dev.lucee.org (searchable by Google)
      • Give what you have tried, give sample code (small), screenshots if appropriate, include error message
      • Test cases in TestBox 
    • Only bring to GitHub after discussing in the above Lucee forum
    • (Alt is Lucee support contract esp new features
    • CF Slack public Lucee channel 
      • Don’t DM support questions to Zac – share with others
      • Don’t Tweet me
  • Why are you proud to use CF?
  • WWIT to make CF more alive this year?

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Mentioned in this episode

Bio

Zac Spitzer

  • Senior Software Engineer @ Rasia
    • 80% Senior Software Engineer @ Distrokid
    • 20% Community Manager @ Lucee Association Switzerland

Originally from Melbourne, Australia

Lives in Berlin, Germany

CFML Developer since 1996, Allaire CF 2.0

Links

 

Interview transcript

Michaela Light 0:02
Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Zach Spitzer from the Lucy Association Switzerland along with some other organizations that I'll tell you about later. And we're going to be talking about some exciting breaking news about Lucy six. All the features in that and when you can get your hands on it. And a bit about behind the scenes on what happens in Lucy and how you can best get support from the Lucy folks. Welcome Zach Debian. So if you don't know, Zach, he's quite quite out there in all the forums, you know, the slack forum on the Facebook ColdFusion channel. Because he is the community manager at Lucy sociation, Switzerland and helps with support and does a lot of other things we'll talk about in a moment, as well as being a senior software engineer at Razia. And does a lot of work for distro kid, which is one of the biggest ColdFusion sites in the world. So as you will know, if you've listened to the mark drew episode about trisko distro kid. He's originally from Melbourne, Australia, but now he's living in Berlin, Germany, and how to voice transplants so he could speak in a better accent than Australian. Just kidding. And he's been doing cold fusion since 1996. Back in the earlier days cold fusion 2.0. So thanks for coming on the show slack. And looking forward to hearing about what's going to be in Lucy six. Yeah, so what's the breaking news?

Zac Spitzer 1:39
So the breaking news is we're finally going to do a first beater of Lucy six in July. Whoo.

Michaela Light 1:47
So it's been a long? Where can people find that?

Zac Spitzer 1:50
So we will be doing I'll be publishing it all over the web. Once we do that. We'll be publishing it online via the Lucy administrator. Because with Lucy, unlike Adobe, you can just update your your local coffee, Lucy server to Lucy six. So we've maintained that we're maintaining compatibility with the old version of Lucy. So if you've got a Lucy 5380539 server, you can just go go to the admin when it comes out and try it out.

Michaela Light 2:19
Oh, cool. And so should we go to lucy.org or some other URL?

Zac Spitzer 2:24
Yep, you can download [email protected]. And you can download one of our existing installers or you can use command box. So we will be starting publishing builds we haven't published builds for the Alpha releases of Lucy six, because it's been a bit broken, and we don't want to waste people's time. Even though lots of people have been super keen to try it. We wanted to reach a point where it was ready to go. So yeah, in a couple of weeks, we will have the first piece of version out there.

Michaela Light 2:53
Excellent. How many Alpha builds? Have you been through that?

Zac Spitzer 2:57
Work? 206 point 0.0 180 At the moment. So that's been a lot.

Michaela Light 3:04
So 180 different builds, people have been trying it out inside the Alpha community. But you're getting ready in a few weeks. By the time this episode is released, I expect it will be released are soon available from lucy.org. And what is the what is the cost? For those who have been asleep for the last few years? What's the cost to use Lucy?

Zac Spitzer 3:30
Nothing you just need to be passionate.

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