MX7 Hot Fixes?

Sorry, but that's not necessarily true (I'm referring to the answer, "true", to csgaraglino's question, "If I download the file from ColdFusion MX 7.02 Cumulative Hot Fix 3, will that catch me up to date on all of the patches?")

No offense meant to Adam, as I realize that it's easy to assume that the answer is "true", but there's more to this question than meets the eye. Given their name, "cumulative hotfix", it's reasonable to assume that a later one always includes all the fixes of the earlier one.

But in fact, sometimes ones that you want to "skip" may have had some manual steps (either extra files in the downloaded zip that need to be processed, or extra individual hotfixes listed at the top or bottom of the technote for the CHF). There are examples of such manual steps in one more CHFs in both CF 9.0.1, CF 8.0.1, and CF 7.0.2.

I've been meaning to write an extended blog entry to address this question/concern/source of confusion, and this question prompted me today to go ahead and post it:

http://www.carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2010/12/12/cfmyths_cumulative_hotfixes

So to csgaraglino, are you referring to skipping from the 7.0.2 CHF 2 to CHF 3? In that case, then sure, as long as you did the manual steps in 7.0.2 CHF 2, you can just apply CHF 3 (but don't forget to notice that it too has its own additional manual steps.) But if you're skipping from 7.0.2 base to CHF 3, then you need to apply the manual steps in CHF 1 and CHF 2--and as I discuss in my blog entry, there's one VITALLY IMPORTANT manual hotfix listed in 7.0.2 CHF 2 that you nearly everyone should apply, to prevent a common source of (real) memory leaks.

To conclude, this concern about "skipping" previous CHFs is in fact a problem with nearly every release of CF (and most CHFs). Again, see the elaborated blog entry for more (much more) detail.

/charlie arehart

charlie@carehart.org

Providing CF and CFBuilder troubleshooting services

at http://www.carehart.org/consulting