Why does a long cfc file work in CF8, but not CF9? Getting “Branch target offset too large for short” error

Question

I have a fairly long cfc file, about 1800 lines long, that worked fine in ColdFusion 8, but after upgrading my development system to ColdFusion 9 and doing some testing I get a compile error for a cfc and the message says "Branch target offset too large for short". I modified the file to eliminate some unused functions and consolidated one to make it shorter and this resolved the problem to get it to work. But still, why did it die on me now when I upgraded to CF9? Anyone else run into this problem in previous or the current version of ColdFusion? Are there any solutions other than modifying the cfc file such as upgrading the jvm?

EDIT If you have an answer to the questions I have, great! Post that, but don't waste time telling me something that I already know. If you are going to post a response, please read the question carefully and answer only if you know the answer. Don't do a google search and post crap that I already know and utilized to get the code to work. The question is, why did it work in CF8 and now not in CF9? Are there other solutions besides what I did?

Answer 1

This is a problem inherent with the JVM as you already know, CF9 has likely added more innate functions to a component and if the methods are all referenced via a giant switch statement with a short being used as the offset, we have less offset pointer space to work with each successive version. People moving from CF7 to CF8 also had the same problems.

So short answer is no.

Most recommendations you find basically tell you to split a large method into a smaller method and several helper methods. The first time I ran into an issue this worked for a large cfc I had. But then as it got bigger no number of helper functions would fix it. Eventually it had to be split into multiple cfcs.

PS: This guy said removing a transaction helped (CF7), there are none wrapping my calls though, so it's not a guaranteed fix I guess http://www.coldfusionmuse.com/index.cfm/2007/9/28/Branch.Target.Offset

Edit
Looks like my previous issue was a different function being too large, splitting the CFC into multiple CFCs was in error. I've since split that problem method into smaller methods, and have been able to consolidate all the functions in one CFC. So that is the solution it seems.

Answer 2

If you haven't already, try running the Code Analyzer in the CFAdmin page, "Debugging & Logging > Code Analyzer". This is a useful tool to find some changes which were made in the language between CF8 and CF9.

We had to change several variable names and function names as CF added them in 9.

Also check here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7ff0.html

Answer 3

CF version: 10 OS: Linux CentOS 6.0

Did face a similar issue where I had 1300+ lines of code in my cfc and one fine day I get the "Branch Target offset.." error. I tried

1. Code Analyser to find any loopholes of legacy- DID NOT FIX

2. Edited the cfc to trim down any last bit of redundant code or comments - reduced around 20+ lines of code - DID NOT FIX

3. I split the code into 2 cfc and extended one to the other- DID NOT FIX

4. I removed any unwanted dump of queries and arrays (part of testing) : THIS WORKED

so I would suggest ensure you don't have any dumps of large data content. Hope this helps.