Tuesday 29 April 2014

ColdFusion 10: be prepared, Adobe is removing the downloads

G'day:
Amongst the (fairly muted) hubbub around ColdFusion 11 shipping today ("Announcing the launch of ColdFusion 11 and ColdFusion Builder 3"), Adobe slipped some bad news into the mix as well. In a few weeks they will be removing the ColdFusion 10 downloads from their site:
Availability of installers for CF10 and CFB 2.0.1
ColdFusion 10 installers and ColdFusion Builder 2.0.1 installers will only be available for download on adobe.com for a limited time – till the 14th of May, 2014. If you need these installers for later use, then please download them before the 14th of May, 2014.


This - IMO - is very premature. ColdFusion 11 will not be sufficiently stable/proven for the next few months to even conscion the idea of running it in production, so ColdFusion 10 will continue to be the go-to ColdFusion version for a few months to come. Let's say a minimum of three months, but perhaps six months to sure.

In fact I was talking to one very experienced ColdFusion reseller today, and they maintain ColdFusion 9 is really the current stable version of CF. 10 not having proven itself yet (I still run CF9, for that matter).

One blog commenter today lamented "so what happens if my ColdFusion 10 server dies? How do I reinstall?" This is a bit leaden. If you are running servers then it's kinda your responsibility to make sure you are in the position to rebuild them without relying on downloading the app installers. You should already have a copy of the installer safe, backed-up, and duplicated off-site. If you don't: go grab 'em now. No, really: now. This article is boring anyhow, and you might otherwise forget.

Over and above keeping your own copies of the installers, Gavin maintains a repository of "old" ColdFusion installers. And I checked today, and he's got the CF10 ones there too. He's blogged about this: "CFML Server - A Different type of ColdFusion Repo - ColdFusion Installs".

So just because Adobe doesn't have your back doesn't mean someone else doesn't. And of course you can also create your own repository - for safekeeping - to.

But make sure you're covered, right?

Cheers.

--
Adam