We are proud to announce the general availability of CommandBox 3.6.0!.  This is a minor release of the CLI tool that contains mostly bug fixes and small enhancements.  You can download the latest version from the CommandBox download page.  We've updated the GitBook docs and Command API docs as well.

There's a lot of command tools out there written by developers to help them automate all sorts of tasks from code refactoring, linting, and builds. Node has become a popular tool to write reusable tools that can be run from the command line, but many CF developers don't realize that CommandBox has allowed developers to [do this nativley in CFML](https://ortus.gitbooks.io/commandbox-documentation/content/developing/commands/developing_commands.html) for years now.

One of the cool things that CommandBox allows you to do is run CFML code directly from the command line via the execute command, or on Unix as a natively-executable hash bang script! This opens up all sorts of doors for scheduling cron jobs and whatnot that you can write in CFML much faster and easier than using bash or shell scripts. One common question is how to access the database from one of these scripts.

In this video Brad Wood introduces the CommandBox Host Updater Module written by Chris Schmitz:

[https://www.forgebox.io/view/commandbox-hostupdater](https://www.forgebox.io/view/commandbox-hostupdater)

which allows you to automatically add host entries to your operating system and starting servers all on port 80 for you using CommandBox. It is really a great example of a CommandBox module, but also a great tool to have for ALL your ccustom development work. Enjoy!

We are pleased to announce the final release of CommandBox 3.5.0!  This is a minor release, with 53 completed tickets-- most of which are server enhancements focused on making server management and configuration easy across any engine.  This version has been in release candidate for a few weeks and has received a lot of testing.  As a minor release, there are no compatibility-breaking changes to any of the public APIs, but there has been some necessary restructuring of the back end bits related to starting servers that could possibly have an effect on you if you have any scripts or custom modules based on the previous folder structure of some server installs.  We recommend all users upgrade to this new version, but take a minute to review the changes so you can fully utilize the new features.

We've been hard at work on the latest version of CommandBox which brings bug fixes, improvements, and new options for deploying and starting servers.  We think it's ready for the general public to give it a good testing before we release it so today we're announcing the CommandBox 3.5.0-rc (release candidate) for you to give a spin.  This should be a painless switch so we encourage you to take a look and provide us with feedback.  We are also pleased t have several features and fixes in this release that were provided by community members as part of our first 1000 open source pulls.

Christmas baking has probably began in your house, filling the air with the sweet aroma of sugar, carbs, cholesterol, and partially hydrogenated oil.  Mmm, just like Grandma used to make!  What better time to cook up a new development environment that runs on CommandBox!  

URL rewriting is common on many server setups and while everyone does the same basic things, the config files they use vary greatly based on the web server they have in play.  CommandBox allows for URL rewriting, but a common question I get is how to convert the rewrites people already have on their existing web servers so CommandBox can use them.

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go.  There's a lot of ways to get to grandmother's house just like there a lot of ways to use CommandBox in your workflow. In today's edition of the 12 tips of (CommandBox) Christmas, we'll hopefully teach you some new tricks. Oh-- and while you're at grandma's, tell her to stay away from those reindeer!