I’m writing this to those who may report in passing (to me or on the forums or portal here) that they “have x updates of CF to do” for their machine, because they skipped some in the past. Or while helping them on their machines (in my consulting), I may see that their hf-updates folder shows multiple updates done the same day, one after another.

In both cases, they are mistakenly assuming that they need to apply each update, one at a time, when they see many. You do NOT.

You need only ever apply the latest update (assuming it’s what you want), if you have more than one available. They are cumulative. You will get the benefits of all the skipped updates by applying the latest.

That said, it’s still in your interest to review the technotes of the updates you’re skipping, to see important information that about those others you’re skipping. Before applying them, you can see the “read more” link offered in each update shown in the ColdFusion Admin “Server Updates” user interface for “available updates” (after applying updates, you will only see in “installed updated” only the one(s) you explicitly installed–not those you applied implicitly doing this.)

You can also find the technote for any previous CF update by just googling/searching it by name, such as “ColdFusion 2018 update 2”.

Finally, do beware that you may need to apply an update to the ColdFusion web server connector. See the bottom of the technotes for updates to CF2018 and 2016, which include a table of which updates introduced a connector update.

For more blog content from Charlie Arehart, see his posts here as well as his posts at carehart.org. And follow him on Twitter and other social media as carehart.