In this section you will find the release notes for the 4.x version of CommandBox.

• Version 4.8.0 - Sept 2019

• Version 4.7.0 - June 2019

• Version 4.6.0 - Mar 2019

• Version 4.5.0 - Dec 2018

• Version 4.4.0 - Nov 2018

• Version 4.3.0 - Oct 2018

• Version 4.2.0 - Aug 2018

• Version 4.1.0 - Jun 2018

• Version 4.0.0 - Jun 2018

Release Notes

Bug

• [COMMANDBOX-934] - Server commands can have huge delay on Windows

• [COMMANDBOX-937] - List artifacts alphabetically.

• [COMMANDBOX-939] - /usr/bin/open on Linux

• [COMMANDBOX-942] - Errors in command CFCs can cause box to exit completely during tab complete

• [COMMANDBOX-949] - Running native binary that returns lots of text can perform poorly

• [COMMANDBOX-950] - Interceptor service blows up if you register a module with an interceptor not matching any current states

• [COMMANDBOX-951] - Allow modules to register an interceptor with no currently valid states

• [COMMANDBOX-953] - Catch errors from desktop.isDesktopSupported()

New Feature

• [COMMANDBOX-930] - Allow system setting (env var) expansions in REPL

• [COMMANDBOX-932] - Improve task DSL to allow access to exit code

• [COMMANDBOX-944] - Add config setting to debug raw native command being used in the "run" command

Improvement

• [COMMANDBOX-249] - Enforce correct casing conventions on scaffolding commands

• [COMMANDBOX-927] - Update propertyFile core module

• [COMMANDBOX-928] - Improve default ignores in box.json from init command.

• [COMMANDBOX-929] - Disable ping to time server host by default

• [COMMANDBOX-931] - Allow exit code to be returned via "return" keyword

• [COMMANDBOX-935] - Improve syntax highlighting in REPL

• [COMMANDBOX-938] - Checking interrupted status from inside a thread doesn't end the task/command

• [COMMANDBOX-943] - Remove hint from default CFC in Lucee for CommandBox CFCs with no hint of their own

• [COMMANDBOX-945] - Endpoint URL shows incorrectly for forgebox endpoints

• [COMMANDBOX-948] - Enhance tab complete for private slugs

Here's the full list of what we've packed into the 4.7.0 release. Click any ticket link for more details.

Bug

• [COMMANDBOX-962] - CommandBox not recognizing implicit folder endpoint

• [COMMANDBOX-967] - Update semver for fix in prerelease comparison

• [COMMANDBOX-970] - Tokenizer breaks "run" command with odd syntax

• [COMMANDBOX-972] - init-wizard command is incorrectly aliasing as init

• [COMMANDBOX-978] - File watcher that modifies the file system triggers the watcher again

• [COMMANDBOX-985] - bump command doesn't work on a submodule

• [COMMANDBOX-986] - Text on standard input causes banner and prompt to be blank

• [COMMANDBOX-988] - Inconsistent behavior of "run" command.

• [COMMANDBOX-989] - Tab completion incorrect for some partial command names

• [COMMANDBOX-990] - Interactive jobs are not thread safe

Improvement

• [COMMANDBOX-956] - Leading zeros in semver prevent them from being matched

• [COMMANDBOX-957] - Allow --verbose flag on uninstall command

• [COMMANDBOX-958] - Add --roundup flag to indents command

• [COMMANDBOX-959] - JSON Schema for box.json

• [COMMANDBOX-968] - Update JGit to 5.3.0.201903130848-r

• [COMMANDBOX-969] - Update Jline to 3.10.0

• [COMMANDBOX-971] - Remove Riaforge endpoint Rince riaforge is dead

• [COMMANDBOX-973] - Modify default box.json from "init" command

• [COMMANDBOX-974] - Add box: namespace for compat with Coldbox injection DSL

• [COMMANDBOX-976] - Improve debugging and error messages for custom ForgeBox endpoints

• [COMMANDBOX-979] - If the test runner produces a 500 exception during watcher no output is shown

• [COMMANDBOX-982] - support for Environment variables in "Key" names

• [COMMANDBOX-983] - Make env vars in CommandBox visible to native OS binaries

• [COMMANDBOX-984] - Launching VSCode from ConEMU screws up the integrated terminal

• [COMMANDBOX-987] - Keep relative installPaths in box.json

Cached HTTP Downloads

You can now cache downloads using the HTTP(S) endpoints using the following syntaxes:

install https+cached://downloads.ortussolutions.com/ortussolutions/coldbox-modules/cbi18n/1.4.0/cbi18n-1.4.0.zip

start cfengine=http+cached://update.lucee.org/rest/update/provider/forgebox/5.3.3.60-RC

This will speed up builds.

Change to Previous Directory

Thanks to a pull request from John Berquist, we've borrowed a Bash and Powershell feature of being able to change back to your previous working directory by typing this:

cd -

Better Tab Completion

Thanks to more pull requests from John Berquist, you can use file and folder based tab completion when typing native binaries from CommandBox

!foo bar "C:/Program Files/baz/myFile.cf_

And tab completion also works better now when typing a quoted string such as a file path that contains a space. This is a huge timesaver!

cd "C:/program Fi_

Access to Intercept data in package scripts

Package scripts that are fired from internal interception points, can access any intercept data via environment variables. This example writes a file into a server home directory when the server starts, using an environment variable to dynamically find the correct path.

package set scripts.onServerStart="touch \$ {interceptData.SERVERINFO.serverHomeDirectory}/hi.txt"

Release Notes

Here are the full release notes for CommandBox 4.8.0:

Bug

• [COMMANDBOX-991] - Can't always install modules - git error: Directory already exists

• [COMMANDBOX-994] - regex metachars not escaped properly in first token of run command

• [COMMANDBOX-998] - testbox watch command doesn't obey verbose flag in box.json

• [COMMANDBOX-999] - Sometimes line breaks leak to console when using expansions

• [COMMANDBOX-1000] - Pass ad-hoc parameters to package scripts

• [COMMANDBOX-1003] - Servers bound to 0.0.0.0 don't open useful browser URL

• [COMMANDBOX-1030] - unicode chars not read from readme files when publishing

• [COMMANDBOX-1040] - Native OS execution doesn't handle exit on fail for *nix

• [COMMANDBOX-1041] - Install path not respected when createPackageDirectory set to false

New Feature

• [COMMANDBOX-1002] - Add cached version of HTTP(S) endpoints

• [COMMANDBOX-1031] - Output binary objects in REPL

• [COMMANDBOX-1039] - Add support for "cd -"

Improvement

• [COMMANDBOX-993] - Announce onServerStop when stopping a --console server

• [COMMANDBOX-996] - Support path completion with "run" or "!" command

• [COMMANDBOX-997] - Expand log output of failed job steps

• [COMMANDBOX-1001] - Pass interceptData to package scripts

• [COMMANDBOX-1004] - Allow tab completion on quoted parameters

• [COMMANDBOX-1033] - Editor on Linux

• [COMMANDBOX-1042] - Return actual exit code of server process from server start

• [COMMANDBOX-1045] - Java install endpoint allows invalid slugs

• [COMMANDBOX-1046] - Pass CommandBox shell env vars to server starts

• [COMMANDBOX-1047] - Better detection of CF Engine when using HTTP provider

Iterate over JSON with foreach command

The foreach command which was introduced recently and allows you to iterate over any list of input and run a command using each item in the list has been enhanced to also allow you to iterate from the CLI over any JSON string that you pipe in.

package show dependencies | foreach

https://commandbox.ortusbooks.com/usage/foreach-command#iterating-over-json

Directory Watchers have more data

Now when you create a directory watcher in a task runner or custom command, you can not only get notified when something in that directory changes, but you also now receive a list of files added, removed, and modified.

watch()
    .onChange( function( paths ) {
        print
            .line( '#paths.added.len()# paths were added!' )
            .line( '#paths.removed.len()# paths were removed!' )
            .line( '#paths.changed.len()# paths were changed!' )            ;
    } )
    .start();

New "coldbox watch-reinit" command

Thanks to Scott Steinbeck, we have a new command called coldbox watch-reinit. This will watch for changes to certain files in your project and will automatically issue a framework reinit when you edit things like configs or services.

package set reinitWatchPaths= "config/**.cfc,models/**.cfc,ModuleConfig.cfc"
coldbox watch-reinit

Color all the JSONs

Thanks to John Berquist, CommandBox now has sweet color coding any time it outputs JSON to the screen. Try it out by running something like "server show".

Users can also customize the colors they see for JSON with the following config settings:

• json.ansiColors.constant

• json.ansiColors.key

• json.ansiColors.number

• json.ansiColors.string

Setting values can be any color name from the system-colors command.

New Gist endpoint

Thanks to Jason Steinshouer we have a new Gist endpoint for installing code from a public Gist.

install gist:b6cfe92a08c742bab78dd15fc2c1b2bb

https://commandbox.ortusbooks.com/package-management/code-endpoints/gist

4.4.0 Release Notes

Bug

• [COMMANDBOX-876] - testbox watcher shows error when test fail

• [COMMANDBOX-881] - Tab complete doesn't work on param values with spaces

• [COMMANDBOX-882] - Long lines wrap in interactive jobs

• [COMMANDBOX-887] - Exact versions don't update from ForgeBox when manually changed.

• [COMMANDBOX-895] - Passing positional args to task errors with required param

New Feature

• [COMMANDBOX-877] - Allow watcher access to files that were added, removed, updated

• [COMMANDBOX-878] - coldbox watch-reinit command

• [COMMANDBOX-879] - Color code JSON on console output by default

Improvement

• [COMMANDBOX-698] - Refresh any salt values when deploying a new CF engine.

• [COMMANDBOX-732] - Add Gist endpoint

• [COMMANDBOX-880] - Change update behavior of GIT and URL endpoints to use semver in path if present

• [COMMANDBOX-883] - Enhance foreach command to accept JSON

• [COMMANDBOX-884] - ACF 11 should start without Secure Profile

• [COMMANDBOX-890] - Enhance "forgebox search" command to break up versions like "forgebox show"

• [COMMANDBOX-891] - Support versions like 0.5.2 in forgebox show/search output

• [COMMANDBOX-892] - Speed up embedded server start

Major Areas of Development

• Major rewrite of CLI engine loader

  • Lucee 5 now powers the CLI

  • Using JSR-223 to dynamically load Lucee 5

• All 3rd Party libs updated

  • JGit

  • Launch4J

  • Runwar

  • JLine3

• Improved Task Runner support

  • Task scaffolding with “task create”

  • Task DSL to call other tasks

  • Ortus Builds are now being converted to Task Runners. No Ant! No XML!

• Support for Private package

• Revamped Server Logs (access, rewrite, console)

• ColdBox 5 updates

• Tons of bug fixes and improvements

Featured Enhancements

256 Color support

CLI Improvements

Along with the newest version of JLine, there's a ton of nice little things now available in CommandBox 4. The first is a totally revamped tab completion interface. Pressing Tab is now prettier, colored, and more organized. Help is integrated right into the interface, and pressing tab repeatedly will cycle through the available options instead of redrawing the screen over and over.

Next is color coding when you type commands in the shell. This make it much easier to tell when you've typed the name of a command correct and makes the difference between the command and parameters easier on your eyes.

Finally is tab complete and syntax highlighting in the REPL. You can tab complete any CFML function as well as previous variable names you've typed. Common CFML keywords are highlighted, as well as CFML functions and there's even color coded matching of braces, parens, and quotes as you type.

Shell History

There are two new features in the shell's history. Pressing "up" will still show the previous items in your history. But typing a partial command like "cd" and THEN hitting up will jump to the most recent histories that start with that word. Very handy to find that one "coldbox create..." command you ran two days ago.

The second new history feature is known in the bash world as i-search. Press Ctrl-Shift-R to open a search from the console where you can search your entire command history by keyword. Keep pressing Ctrl-Shift-R to cycle backwards through the results. Press Ctrl-Shift-S to cycle forwards through the results. Press enter to run the matched search select, or edit it inline before running it.

CommandBox Bullet Train

There's a new CommandBox module available called "commandbox-bullet-train" which makes the CLI look super sleek and sexy. You can add it very easily with:

You'll want to install a powerline-patched font as well. Check out the instructions under the "Fonts" section in the readme.

And is that some sweet new ASCII art taking advantage of 256 colors as well as a randomized quote/tip on every shell start? Why yes, yes it is!

Interactive Inputs

Interactive Jobs

Some of the more wordy tasks you perform like installing packages and starting servers have gotten a big makeover in how they reveal their output to you. If an installation fails, you want to know about it, but so long as everything worked, you usually don't care. These actions will now scroll the last few active log entries past in a controlled format, but hide them at the end so the shell stays much cleaner, even when installing dozens of packages at once.

As an example, installing CFConfig actually installs 9 separate packages. This used to output around 100 lines of console logging which no one in their right mind ever read. All the same logging is still there, but now by the time it's done, this is all you see:

If you want to troubleshoot, or you are running this install as part of a build and you want to see all this output later, just use the --verbose flag. For server starts, using the --debug flag will preserve all your precious log output on the screen after the server starts.

Even cooler, the Interactive Job interface is fully documented and available for you to use in your Task Runners or Custom Commands.

Docs:

Example:

Which looks like this when it's done:

Server Logs

We did a lot of work to make dealing with servers easier-- especially when it comes to your log files. Console starts and tailing server logs are now color coded so it's easier to find errors and warnings.

We've also fine tuned what information shows up when you do --console starts as well as --debug starts to reduce the noise and enhance the useful information. For instance, when you do:

You'll see a line of debug logging that shows if the URL rewrites kicked in and what the URL was rewritten to. How useful is that?!

Remember you can view and tail the server "out" logs like so:

Access Logs

The built in Undertow web server that CommandBox uses just got more powerful. You can turn on access logs that show you every incoming HTTP request in the same "common format" as Apache web server.

You can view and tail this log file like so:

URL Rewrite Logs

But wait, there's more logging goodness. Troubleshooting rewrite rules can be really tricky. That's why we broke out a new separate log file just for Tuckey Rewrites to dump into. You can dial in how much information you get with --debug and --trace server starts.

You can view and tail this log file like so:

Automatic Log Rotation

CommandBox web servers are truly ready for prime time. All the Undertow log files above automatically rotate which means you'll never fill up a hard drive on accident due to out of control log files.

Version Checks on Startup

Another optional module you can install is the CommandBox update check module. It will check every 24 hours (when starting the shell) and let you know if your CLI or any of your system modules are out of date.

Pipe output of native OS binaries

This used to work back in the day, but was a regression back when I added the ability to interact with native binaries. Now you have the best of both worlds.

Task DSL

Running other tasks from inside of Task Runners is now easier. Docs:

Example:

(Same as running "task run build" from the CLI)

Actual Proper Non-Sucking Ctrl-C and Ctrl-D support

You can now cancel long running commands, tasks, and even HTTP downloads by pressing Ctrl-C. Yay! Pressing Ctrl-C from the prompt does nothing, which is consistent with other shells. Pressing Ctrl-D from the shell will now exit CommandBox entirely which is also consistent with other shells. In case you're wondering, Ctrl-C fires the interrupt terminal signal, and Ctrl-D sends the EOF (end of file) signal.

Docs:

Load ad-hoc jars for Task Runners

You can now load ad-hoc jars right from Task Runners which is sometimes necessary for working with Java libs. Docs:

Examples:

Task Scaffolding

Wanted to play with Task Runners but not sure where you start? Drop everything, grab the closest CommandBox 4 CLI, and run these two commands:

You just created a new task and ran it. Go on, look around!

Updated Directory Listing

Directory listings have gotten a makeover. The columns actually align, the file sizes are human-readable, and the file types are color coded. Be careful, you might actually be able to find stuff now!

ASCII Art Stereograms

If you remember the "Magic Eye" books from your childhood, you'll be pleased to know CommandBox has an ASCII Art Stereogram for every day of the month. You'll find it hiding inside the info command. The "image" will change every day at midnight.

If you keep looking like that, your face will freeze that way!

Known Breaking Changes

We tried very hard to keep CommandBox 4 compatible but there are a few things that might surprise you.

• The REPL and Task Runners run against Lucee 5.2.7 instead of 4.5.5. That might affect valid CFML syntax as well as datasource definitions

• The default server you get when you type "server start" is also Lucee 5.2.7, not Luce 4.5.5.

• Java 7 support removed. This affects both the core CLI as well as any servers. For CF9 users, you can still run CF9 servers but you'll need to use an older version of Java 8 such as 1.8.0_92. (Note: Java 9 and 10 don't work yet!)

• Native CFML execution via box foo.cfm now routes through the "execute" command which means no Application.cfc will get run. You can refactor your cfm scripts or use the undocumented _internalRequest() function in Lucee 5.

• CommandBox 4 is prettier, more productive, and cooler than CommandBox 3. This may cause CLI envy with your Node coworkers. Don't worry, this is normal.

Bug

Story

New Feature

Improvement

The main features of CommandBox 4.5.0 are:

• Ability to install OpenJDK automatically for your servers to use ()

• Environment Variables in the shell ()

• Support for Forgebox Enterprise (TBA soon)

• JRE Bundled CommandBox installs now use OpenJDK instead of Oracle JDK

• TestBox Code Coverage integration ()

I already wrote a fairly comprehensive overview of the new features and big fixes here. Go read it:

Note, there are two backwards incompatible changes. The first is we turned OFF directory browsing by default on servers. You can easily get the old behavior back with

The second is that unhandled errors in the shell no longer show the stack trace (you probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't tell you!) Get the old behavior back with:

Release Notes

Here's the full list of everything that went into this release.

Bug

• [] - editing in the shell prompt is buggy while using Gitbash in VSCode

• [] - Passing positional args to task errors with required param

• [] - Passing command string as single arg to box fails

• [] - Exitting recipe with exit code errors

• [] - external module mappings broken in CommandBox 4

• [] - Incorrect behavior when parsing unmatched quotes

• [] - Cruft left in temp folder

• [] - Silence annoying ESAPI warnings

• [] - Warnings on java 11 about illegal reflective access

New Feature

Improvement

Release Highlights

• Fixed the annoying "server spanner" error that *nix users saw when starting servers.

• Updated CLI engine (and default server) version to Lucee 5.2.7.63 which includes an important security fix.

• Added a new "noninteractive" setting to improve the output on build servers like Jenkins or Travis-CI

• Task runner metadata changes picked up without needing to reload the CLI

• Ability to load ad-hoc modules on the fly from Task Runners

Release Notes

Here's the full list of tickets we addressed in the 4.1.0 release. Thanks to those who send me pull requests for some of these fixes and features!

Bug

• [] - server start on linux: "/bin/bash not found" message displays

• [] - Improve port binding logic

• [] - Task component metadata is not refreshed before each run

• [] - Error when invalid UTF-8 characters are in servers.json

New Feature

Improvement

Task Target Dependencies

For a task that has more than one target (method) you can specify dependencies that will run, in the order specified, prior to your final target. Specify task target dependencies as a comma-delimited list in a depends annotation on the target function itself. There is no limit to how many target dependencies you can have, nor how deep they can nest.

Given the above Task Runner, typing

would run the runMeFirst() and run() method in that order.

Docs:

GZip Compression

The web server in CommandBox is capable of enabling GZIp compression to reduce the size of HTTP responses. To enable GZip compress on your CommandBox server, add a web.gzipEnable setting in your server.json file.

Add --simple flag to ls/dir command

When you get a directory listing in CommandBox, you can add the --simple flag which will only output the file and folder name without any other information. This feature was added to compliment the feature below.

forEach Command

The foreach command will execute another command against every item in an incoming list. The list can be passed directly or piped into this command. The default delimiter is a new line so this works great piping the output of file listings directly in, which have a file name per line.

This example will find all JSON files in a directory and run the cat command against them.

Java 9/10/11 support

This is still a little experimental since it hasn't gone through full testing, but we upgraded to Lucee 5.2.9.31 in the core CLI which has support for the newer versions of Java. We've removed the checks that previously preventing CommandBox from even trying to run on versions of Java later than 8 and at first glance it seems to be working though there's been some flakiness on Java 11. Please help test these later Java versions and remember that if you spin up a server, you'll want to still dial in Java 8 for Adobe CF 2016 and prior and Lucee 5.2.8.50 and prior even if you have the CLI running on Java 9+.

Docs for setting custom Java version in your server:

Release notes

Here's the full release notes for CommandBox 4.3.0.

Bug

New Feature

Improvement

Random Fixes

In no particular order...

• Fix background colors not showing up in Powershell and Windows cmd

• System Setting expansions not always working in server.json

• testbox run no longer blindly assumes you're returning JSON.

• Piping commands into box was broken since 4.0.0

• Starting server with --debug didn't output logs on error.

Random New Features

Sorted by createUUID() DESC...

• Custom commands have more control over their tab completion candidates.

• Control how many levels deep package list displays

• New versions of Lucee, JGit, JLine, and WireBox

• More pack200 of the Lucee jar (and more improvements to come soon in the next version of Lucee)

• Automatic detection for build servers like Travis-CI to hide progress bar animations.

• Cloning Git repos during install has a nice new progress bar that plays well with

• You can use the aforementioned progress bar for your own purposes in custom commands and Task Runners.

Improvements to Native Binaries

The run command has been a pain over the last few versions as every "fix" has seemed to lead to another regression. We've made some more changes to try and get each use case working as expected with no annoying bash messages about "job control". Fingers crossed.

Single one-off command, streams output to console as it comes.

Piping output of native binary into another Command (output captured all together and not streamed).

Running interactive commands. No output at all really, standard input and output of CommandBox bound directly to native shell

Better Exit Code handling

You can now control the exit code that CommandBox (or your recipe) exits with. Remember, zero is successful, any other number is failure.

Access the Exit Code of the previous command via a System Setting expansion of${exitCode}.

Recipes now have better support for exit codes. If a command throws an error OR returns a non-zero exit code, the recipe will stop and the exit code of the last command will be returned as the exit code from the recipe command. And if it was a non-interactive shell, the exit code will flow all the way back to the operating system from the box binary. Also, running "exit" inside of a recipe will no longer exit the entire shell, but just that recipe execution. This give you a lot better control over your recipes.

Command Chaining

Let's take a moment to review an existing but little known feature of CommandBox that we borrowed from bash. This is not new, but you need to know this for the following section to make any sense. Similar to bash, CommandBox allows you to chain multiple commands together on the same line and make them conditional on whether the previous command was successful or not.

&&

You can use && to run the second command only if the previous one succeeded.

||

You can use || to run the second command only if the previous one failed.

;

You can use a single semicolon (;) to separate commands and each command will run regardless of the success or failure of the previous command.

New Assertion Commands

With the above building blocks, we can get clever to create simple conditionals to only run commands if a condition is met. Or these can simply be used to cause recipes to stop execution or to fail builds based on a condition. The following commands output nothing, but they return an appropriate exit code based on their inputs.

pathExists

Returns a passing (0) or failing (1) exit code whether the path exists.

You can specify if the path needs to be a file or a folder.

assertTrue

Returns a passing (0) or failing (1) exit code whether truthy parameter passed. Truthy values are "yes", "true" and positive integers. All other values are considered falsy

assertEqual

Returns a passing (0) or failing (1) exit code whether both parameters match. Comparison is case insensitive.

New S3 Endpoint for Installing Packages

Big thanks to John Berquist and Dominic Watson for helping add this new feature. You can now install packages directly from S3, Amazon S3, Digital Ocean Spaces and Google Disk.

There are several different authentications mechanisms available too:

• Per bucket credentials in your CommandBox endpoint settings

• Global credentials in your CommandBox endpoint settings

• Environment variables

• AWS credentials file

• IAM role

The full docs are here:

Updated Server Tray Menus

We've added 17 pieces of flair to our server tray menus to show you more information such as PID, webroot, and port as well as a new option to open up the web root in your file system explorer.

Release Notes

Here's the full list of everything that changed in CommandBox 4.2.0.

Bug

New Feature

Improvement