044 CommandBox + ForgeBox: ColdFusion Code, Package, Share, Go! with Luis Majano

Luis Majano talks about “CommandBox + ForgeBox: ColdFusion Code, Package, Share, Go!” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive podcast with host Michaela Light.

Episode highlights

• Why he created CommandBox three years ago
  • Then there were better tools with other languages and other CFers were moving
  • He took the lead in creating better CF tooling
  • Tired of CF language shaming
  • Created at an Ortus company retreat
• What the heck is CommandBox is now
  • A very thin java layer than wraps Lucee that creates a headless server
  • A class loader
  • All coded in CFML
  • Open source – any CFer can modify and contribute
  • A package manager
    • Like Mavin, MPM, Yarn
  • A CLI and REPL
  • What the heck a CLI
  • And what is a REPL?
    • Can run, evaluation and print code (in a loop)
  • Scripts and batch files with full OS and piping between scripts
  • JVM containers
• Future plans
  • Orchestration of cloud servers
  • Docker
  • Any WAR file
• How containers can save you time and headaches
  • Containers vs VMs
  • Total change in doing DevOps
  • Docker Swarms for scaling
  • Fast to spin up – light up
  • CFML is ahead of other languages
  • CFML portability
  • Digital Ocean, AWS
  • Portainer
• No need for Node
  • Using CF tools
  • See Brad’s article on this below
• Package management
  • What the heck is a package and why would you want to manage it?
  • Reusability of code
  • Gives the Dependencies
  • Continuous Integration
  • Similar flow and process to what you get in Node
  • Only need a descriptor Box.json in the folder for it to be treated as a package
  • Installation
  • Versioning
  • Package scripts
  • Artifacts
  • Git integration
  • JAR endpoints
  • Future – Mavin and Grable support
• Why every CFer should create a ForgeBox account
  • Help promote the CF community
  • Encourage sharing of code and knowledge by making it easy
  • MVP did this for Java
  • Great for your resume
• What is ForgeBox
  • Cloud Repository for packages
  • Supports multiple versions of your code in one package
    • Can lock specify dependencies and versions
  • 400+ contribution already there
  • Gamification of contributors
• Free open ForgeBox vs Paid Private ForgeBox
  • SaaS
  • Private version for government users and commercial code (vs open source)
  • ForgeBox Entreprise can run in a container on your private server
• Try CommandBox in 10 mins
  • Download it
  • Install it
  • Start a new server
• Why are you proud to use CF?
  • Proud to be a modern CFML developer
  • The tools and apps (the ecosystem) around the language make you more productive
• WWIT for you to make CF more alive this year?
  • Use cool tools for CFML
  • Write cool apps in CFML
  • Share about them online and at conferences
• What did you enjoy at CFObjective?
• What are you looking forward to at NAGW, CFCAMP and CF Summit?

Mentioned in this episode

• Denny Valient of Railo
• Lucee CFML
• Docker containers
• REPL
• WAR file
• Portainer 
• No need for Node blog articles by Brad Wood 
• Grunt
• Gulp
• Upcoming book Modern CFML in 100 minutes book 
  • This book is inspired by the original Ruby in 100 minutes and Mike Henke's work on CFML in 100 minutes. The purpose of this book is to jumpstart developers into the ColdFusion (CFML) programming language from a modern perspective and a focus on best practices and object orientation.
• Ortus Solutions
• NAGW
• CFCAMP
• CF Summit

And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.

What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.

And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.

You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.

All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.

Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.

No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens Next

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

Modern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.

√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production

√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading

√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF

√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free!

 

Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Bio

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer born in El Salvador and is the president of Ortus Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in web development, architecture and professional open source support and services. His background includes over 17 years of software development experience, architecture, and system design.

He is the creator of the ColdBox MVC Platform, ContentBox Modular CMS, CommandBox CLI and many more open source projects. He lives in Texas with his beautiful wife Veronica, baby girl Alexia and baby boy Lucas! You can read his blog and technology musings at https://www.luismajano.com.

Links

• cfObjective
• Twitter

Interview transcript

Michael:           Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Louis Majano otherwise known as Superman of the ColdFusion world because if you were into the box you actually saw him next to a Superman cutout where you could take his photo. But also, because he's just produced so much open source software, and really helped out the ColdFusion community. We’re going to be looking in depth in today's episode two things that he's been heavily involved in.

One is CommandBox which he created three years ago, and the other is ForgeBox. And why everyone listening needs to know about these things, and I strongly recommend, check them out. And we'll look at what the heck is CommandBox for those people who don't know what it is. And what the heck is a CLI and a REPL. Also look at how containers could be saving you time, and headaches in your ColdFusion development. Why there is no longer any need for node in your development, package management and also, we’ll look at why everyone listening should have a ForgeBox account. And there's a new kind of ForgeBox account of some of you listening may have been waiting for with bated breath if you knew it existed. So welcome, Luis.

Luis:                 Gracias, welcome very much Michael.

Michael:           And he's also the founder of or to [inaudible] [01:16] solutions who do a lot of great stuff. It's not just him there's a whole bunch of guys; Brad, Gavin, all the people who I'm forgetting the names of in the second. But I will remember later.

Luis:                 yes

Michael:           So, suddenly three years ago you decided to create CommandBox, why?

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