Great feedback, Dave! Here are my thoughts: > There are a couple thoughts/questions I have about Plum, some of which I can see eventually causing FUD (fear, uncertaintly, and doubt) in the broader CF community. I figured it'd be good to discuss them now so that everybody's on the same page. > > 1) Does the IDE run on Mac OSX using Mono? Here's the issue if the answer is "no." There are some very impressionable voices on the various CF lists who are unabashed Mac users, particularly some who are very open about using other methodologies. The moment they start posting "I won't even look at Plum until it supports Macs," you immediately lose a decent sized number of users. Let the FUD begin...
As soon as the Plum V1.1 cycle begins, we have it scheduled to look at where Mono is with respect to using it with Plum on the Mac. We've had this in mind since you first mentioned it to us privately some months ago, and to us it's critically important. If there is some way we can make Plum run on top of Mono on the Mac without having to rip the guts out of Plum then we'll do it. > 2) Will Plum eventually support databases such as MySQL and Postgres? I am noticing an increasing number of posts to the lists from people using each of these, particularly MySQL (though I realize that doesn't necessarily mean they're popular -- they could just be more difficult to use). I completely understand the need to get a 1.0 out there that supports the majority of users, but is broader RDMBS support on the horizon in v1.1 or beyond? Or have you decided to forgo the others for customer support reasons? We're also looking at this for V1.1. You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the need to get V1.0 out, and that's what's driving us right now with the mainstream DB platforms (SQL Server, Access, and Oracle). > 2) I don't like that I can't tell Plum where to put the custom tags and components. I already have an infrastructure in place for those files that, I'd like to gradually integrate Plum with them as opposed to integrating them with Plum. I don't want to have to re-factor all my existing code, and I also ideally don't want to have my CTs and CFCs in different locations -- that's a maintainability nightmare. Did you see the section of the Plum Help at the root level toward the bottom titled "Deploying a Plum Application"? I show how to do what I think you're wanting to do. We kept things as easy as possible for a basic install to make the mainstream happy, but I realized that there are other ways people want to deploy, so I wrote that into Plum Help. > 3) Why is it that I need to install the Plum files for each separate application that I create? Is it not possible to have some concept of runtime shared files so that upgrades, etc., are easier? Also, is that converter from the cf_* syntax to cfmodule packaged with Plum? I don't have to worry about shared hosting or applications moving around because I work for one company, so I'd like to continue to use my current standard of using cfmodule. Further, does that converter support using cfimport instead? The Plum Framework is designed to be modified to the developer's desires, and each application will often be modified differently from the others on the same server, so we designed it such that each application is autonomous from the others with its own copy of the framework. Also, the Verity.cfc is often very different from one application to another. You can, however, modify things to point to common directories using the techniques described in the "Deploying" section of Plum Help I mentioned earlier. I wouldn't recommend it, though, because once you need to modify something in one app you're stuck, or you'll have to rearrange things to accommodate the change. When an upgrade to Plum becomes available, I don't suggest that people rush to upgrade deployed apps, but instead leave them working they are (if it works, don't fix it). If an upgrade corrects a flaw, then the developer can stage and deploy a new version that includes the corrected pieces, but I wouldn't suggest reinstalling the Plum Framework over an existing copy of framework because Verity.cfc will most often be different, as might other components that have been modified. > 4) To what extent can I manually modify the generated files before the Plum IDE can no longer read/parse them correctly? I guess I'm still mulling the impact of using an IDE to make changes to files vs. the traditional editing in my favorite IDE. What I'm trying to say is that, while the Plum IDE is incredible at making my life easy, I don't want it to be something that I *have* to use to make changes. The Plum IDE isn't a "round tripper" that reads in and parses the files it generates. The Plum IDE simply generates files over what is already there (unless you have locked those files in the Plum IDE) based on the settings in your Plum project file. I explain all this in the Plum Help file, but you may not have the completed version of Help that has all that explanation in it. The version I have does because I've been working on it constantly since the last release. > Those are my initial thoughts/questions. What do you think? I hope you know that we *always* take what you and the other Beta Testers have to say and immediately put it into the list of things to look at for either the current or following release. Remember when we first started bringing you in a year ago, the suggestions you made and how it shaped the product? We'll always do this. The only restriction is time and what the market as a whole asks for. Keep it coming! :) Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis Member of Team Macromedia Advanced Intensive Training: * C# & ASP.NET for ColdFusion Developers * ColdFusion MX Master Class * Advanced Development with CFMX and SQL Server 2000 http://www.ColdFusionTraining.com Download CommerceBlocks V2.1 and LoRCAT from http://www.ProductivityEnhancement.com The ColdFusion MX Bible is in bookstores now!
