ColdFusion with VS Code in 2025: Best Extensions, Debugger Setup, and Productivity Config

Visual Studio Code is now the mainstream ColdFusion editor, and in 2025 you have three serious extension choices. Adobe ColdFusion Builder extension for VS Code is Adobe’s official offering — it bundles a Server Panel, RDS, PMT integration, an interactive step debugger, code assist, and a security code analyzer; it requires VS Code 1.68+ and Java 11+. KamasamaK’s vscode-cfml is the long-trusted community extension (the now-abandoned ilich/vscode-coldfusion explicitly named it as its successor), giving syntax highlighting, hover docs from CFDocs, signature help, and component indexing. cfmleditor is an actively-maintained community fork many developers now prefer for day-to-day work — lighter than Adobe's, pulling docs from CFDocs (or full Lucee docs) with hover documentation and signature help. For linting you add CFLint (via KamasamaK's vscode-cflint), for formatting you add a CFFormat extension backed by the CommandBox cfformat module with a shareable .cfformat.json, and for the debugger you enable RDS + Allow Line Debugging + Request Debugging Output in the ColdFusion Administrator, restart CF, and use the extension's "CFML Debug" profile. This guide gives the complete 2025 setup — extensions, a working debugger, and productivity config.
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