What tools do I need to develop in ActionScript (in Linux)

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/425511

  •  06-07-2019
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Question

I've never developed Flash before but I have a project where I want to use an ActionScript 3 library and I'm not sure what tools I need to start. To further complicate things my main development box is an Ubuntu box. Are there any necessary packages I need to install? Or any .deb's I can buy?

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Solution

A Windows or Mac box. :-)

just kidding, actually you can use the Flex 3 SDK mentioned above and compile using the CLI. If these AS3 Libraries are indeed Flex libraries (sometimes there are discrepancies between what works in Flex, what works in CS3, and what works in both) then you should be able to import them and use them.

Also, I've never tried it myself, but Flex Builder is based on Eclipse and I believe there's a way to configure Eclipse to compile with the opensource Flex compile if you'd rather work in a graphical IDE.

OTHER TIPS

I have written a blog entry on how to setup Eclipse + AXDT + Flex SDK to prepare your mxml/actionscript (as3) development environment on Linux. If you are interested, you can have a look here: http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2009/09/flash-development-on-linux.html

It looks like the Flex 3 sdk (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/flexdownloads/index.html) is a good place to start. Any other suggestions?

I've had very good experiences with Sprouts. It is a ruby wrapper for the Flex SDK that allows building with Rake and easily hooks into continuous integration engines.

http://www.projectsprouts.com/

I've been using Flex Builder Linux recently and can recommend it. It's straightforward to get going and, for an alpha, is stable and has all the features you could want.

Project Sprouts is probably going to be the quickest way to get up and running with ActionScript or Flex development on any operating system, but especially on Linux.

You'll need to install Ruby and RubyGems, other than that, it's a couple of terminal commands and you should have an application building and displaying.

You should be able to build ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, AIR or Flex Projects without any manual system configuration at all. Because Sprouts is inherently a CLI application, you can use any development environment you prefer and initiate your builds with simple commands like:

Compile and run debug build

rake debug

Compile and run test harness

rake test

Compile an optimized build for deployment

rake deploy

Compile your application as a library

rake swc

Generate documentation for your application

rake doc

Of course you can easily create or customize your build scripts using Rake, an amazingly simple and flexible build script engine.

Like Rails, Sprouts also comes standard with code generators that automatically create classes, test cases, test suites and even MXML components.

Unlike many open-source projects, Sprouts includes some pretty extensive and detailed documentation.

Let us know what you think.

http://projectsprouts.org

You could try Haxe. It isn't really ActionScript but it is very similar (and you could also compile to the server side or JavaScript).

While FlexBuilder is good, it lacks many of the features that Powerflasher includes in FDT (Flash Developer Tools) for Eclipse. FlexBuilder is missing things like Templates, better formatting, auto-fixing of warnings and errors. It runs on Eclipse making it cross platform, but be warned that they do not test in a linux environment (however people have had no significant complaints).

See all the features here: http://solutions.powerflasher.com/index.php?id=136#feature_03

I use the Flex SDK, Emacs (Sub your editor of choice) and Ant as my build tool. I blogged about how to get everything set up here:

http://blog.apterainc.com/software/setting-up-a-flex-development-enviroment-in-gnulinux/

Adobe has an free alpha release of FlexBuilder for Linux, I thought it was quite unstable when editing MXML files, but if your doing strict actionscript work, you may find it useful. you can get that here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/

You might like to have a look at MTASC http://www.mtasc.org/ An open source action script compiler. I've been meaning to get around to looking at it but not had the chance yet. Heard great things about it tho. Hopefully when I do get around to it and have questions you'll be around to answer them

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