Today I wanted to give ColdFusion 8 debugging a try.

So, I started followed the instructions on how to setup the enviornment for debugging. After installing ColdFusion 8 extensions for Eclipse, I went to enable debugger in ColdFusion Administrator. The CF administrator instructs that:

You must specify this debugger port in the JVM settings of your application server, for example: -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=5005, and restart the server.

If I was using JRun, I know that these options can be added in the jvm.config file.

But as I use JBoss, it took me little bit to figure out where I need to make these changes.

JBoss does not have jvm.config file. You have specify the JVM settings in

You need to look for the portion where JAVA_OPTS variable is setup. Add the following to the existing  JAVA_OPTS

Restart the server and these settings become active.

For complete instructions on how to setup ColdFusion 8 Debugger visit  this article on Adobe DevNet:  Using the ColdFusion 8 step-through debugger for Eclipse

Once it gets going, it is quite useful. Reminds me of the good old days when CF debugging used to be a part of CF Studio.

PS: There is this interesting article on 6 Common Errors in Setting Java Heap Size. While talking about the common errors, it also indicates how to setup Java options/JVM arguments in a whole range of environments.