ColdFusion Builder 2 Hot fix – be aware that you need a JRE

by kai on 01/01/2012



This was sitting in my inbox for quite a while.  When the ColdFusion team released hot fix 1 for ColdFusion Builder 2, some people reported problems applying the hotfix ending up with an error message claiming that there was no Java Runtime Environment installed.

At first glance, it might make you wonder because if you’re about to apply a ColdFusion Builder 2 hot fix, one would expect ColdFusion Builder 2 to have access to a Java Runtime Environment somewhere on the machine as CF Builder 2 is based on Eclipse which itself is based on Java.

The most likely reason why this is happening to you is that there’s no JRE or JDK in your system PATH. Even though ColdFusion Builder and its installer provides and installs a JRE (which would be in the \jre\bin folder of the ColdFusion Builder 2 installation folder in a stand-alone Windows installation), this JRE is not added to the system PATH. There’s a good reason for this – basically trying to install ColdFusion Builder 2 as less system-invasive as possible.

In case there are other JREs installed on the system (and added to the PATH) the error message should not hit you as the hot fix installer would just grab said JRE from the system path. In case there is no other JRE installed, the hot fix installer (which is delivered without a JRE for size reasons) will not be able to execute its payload and therefore provide you the error message.

You might have already figured it – but this is mostly an issue on Windows. On Mac there’s usually a JRE/JDK installed anyway (not on Lion though, where you have to manually add it) and I haven’t seen this problem occurring on OS X so far (not saying that it can’t happen). Adobe’s tech note about hot fix 1 mentions this very briefly:

NoteOn Windows, ensure that JRE is in the system path. If not, set the path and proceed.”

The easiest way to deal with this (without installing another JRE/JDK) is to use the already existing one on your system. So, you could just add the following (or similar, depending on your installation) path your to your PATH: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe ColdFusion Builder\jre\bin . After that, run the hot fix installer as described in the tech note.

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