ColdFusion 2021 "refreshed" installers available (with update 5)...but only in one place for now
If you find this post in 2023 or beyond and are looking for the CF2021 installers, please read this update before proceeding. This post is from Oct 2022, about new installers offered then, while CF2021 was still the latest version.To be clear, once Adobe comes out with a new version, they no remove the installers of the old version from the public pages of their site. Does that mean you're stuck and CANNOT get the installers, perhaps that "you paid for"? No, it does NOT mean that. You just need to know where to find them.
1) First, if you are the person who BOUGHT CF, then you should have an account at either https://account.adobe.com/products or https://licensing.adobe.com/, and you can find the installers you paid for there.
2) If instead you either DID NOT buy CF (perhaps using the free trial edition), or someone ELSE bought it (maybe you don't know who it is), or you just can't get into that account, note that there is an online repository of old (and new) installers at cfmlrepo.com, which is managed by trusted community members, including myself.
Now, back to what the original post was about...
Here's some surprising news: Adobe has released a "refreshed" installer for CF2021, which includes update 5 (which came out last week) built-in.
Did you know about this? You'd be forgiven if you had not heard, for reasons I will explain. And I'm glad to share the news, though it's a good news/bad news sort of thing (just like with the update itself. More on that in another post to come.)
TLDR: these new "refreshed" CF2021 installers are (for now) available only here: here.
As for information ABOUT the refreshed installers, here's the news in brief (the good and the not so good):
- Good news: there is a new full installer for CF2021, for each of Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Solaris.
- Not good news: there are not new "zip" installers, at least for now.
- Good news: these "refreshed" installers includes update 5, so if you are installing CF2021 newly on a machine, that would be easier than getting an older installer and updating it.
- Not good news: the installer implements only Java 11.0.11, while the version available as of the release of update 5 last week was 11.0.16.1, from July 2022
- Some odd news: Adobe didn't mention the availability of this refreshed installer in the CF2021 update 5 technote, nor their blog post or forum post announcing update 5.
- The most odd news: again, the refreshed installers are only available for download from one place currently, the CF "downloads" page. More on that below.
- Bad news for those still using CF2018: while there was indeed the update 15 released also last week, Adobe has NOT offered such a refreshed installer for CF2018 and likely will not.
Read on for more.