Flex Development on Linux, What's a Good Free Environment

Flex development on Linux, what's a good free environment?

I use TextMate to do some Flex hacking on my home computer (a PowerBook G4 which can't run FlexBuilder) and I have no trouble writing applications. It depends if you are so used to IDE support that you cannot live without it. I like code completion, project management and the debugger in Flex Builder but I can live without it. TextMate isn't free but any text editor that had code coloring for ActionScript would do for me.

I usually use ant to manage my builds and that is free. The Flex SDK is free. That is all you need plus a little patience.

Is there a Flex IDE/development env that works on Ubuntu 64bit?

Flex on Ubuntu: The Complete How To Guide describes all the available options, the most prominent one is :

Flex Builder Linux Alpha is an
Adobe free product, which is a Flex
build environment as a plugin for
Eclipse. Don’t worry about the Alpha
part, it seems like a very stable
product, and besides eating up some
memory, I had no problems with it. It
is actually an exact replica of the
Flex Builder for Windows, without the
features of Design View, some wizards
and the profiler.

Is Flex development without FlexBuilder realistic?

I've been using Flex since version 2 and Flex3/BlazeDS since it came out of beta. I also have some experience with Lazzlo and the difference is day and night (Flex rocks!). I have not regretted once using Flex. Regarding FlexBuilder, it is worth every penny. While it is completely possible and reasonable to write Flex application without FlexBuilder, the productivity gains of using it will more than recoup the investment. Try the evaluation for 30 days and compare it to some of the other options suggested about (I'm going to try FlashDevelop).

Some things you get with FlexBuilder include:

• Code completion
• Visual editor
• Debugger (it is fantastic!!)
• Profiler (also very good)

Regarding Linux, the alpha version of FlexBuilder does not have a visual editor. Other than that, I understand it is reasonably feature complete, still free, and many of the Adobe employees I've talked with that use Linux are happy with it.

flex Support in linux

You can develop with Flex on Linux using the command line compiler available in the Flex SDK.

Flash Builder, Adobe's eclipse based IDE is not supported on Linux. But, you can search out alternate IDEs. FDT is one that has linux support. I thought that IntelliJ did too. The Flex support in IntelliJ was demonstrated at Max and is pretty awesome.

Open source alternatives to Flex Builder?

FlashDevelop seems to be the most popular.

Some others include

• FDT
• IntelliJ IDEA

Development tools for Adobe Flex/AIR?

As dirkgently said, installing Flex Builder 3 in Linux is a great way to get going. It's quick and easy to get up and running, and since it's based on Eclipse, the overall environment is decent.

That said, I was able to put together a decent Flex-building environment using Emacs and some third-party packages to get everything running under Linux.

Here's a quick rundown of what I used (this isn't comprehensive--just what I can remember):

• Flex 3 SDK for Linux
• actionscript-mode.el for AS code
  highlighting
• nxml bundle for MXML code
  highlighting
• ani-fcsh.el for running fcsh
  from Emacs
• ECB for code browsing in Emacs
• snippet.el for creating code
  templates in Emacs

This link was also helpful for getting started. It links to this article which talks about putting together a Flex development environment in Linux. I was able to put together some shell scripts for compiling and running applications.

Note: I didn't do any debugging, though Adobe has some info about it.

Note #2: If you decide to use Flex Builder, it will install the Flash Player 9 debugger version in your browser (you can tell it not to). I would recommend installing version 10's debugger. The builder will output a warning about not supporting the version, but everything else appears to work.

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

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.

Developement platform for j2EE/Flex under linux?

Try the AXDT plugin for a gratis alternative to FlexBuilder.

Setup of flex units on linux

First of all, just follow the linux part of the instructions on the following site:Running unit tests - FlexMojos. Download the flashplayer and untar it some appropriate place and put the absolute directory path in your PATH variable.

Download the xvfb-run script and change the following 'fi'

# If the user did not specify an X authorization file to use, set up a temporary
# directory to house one.
if [ -z "$AUTHFILE" ]; then
  XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR="${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/$PROGNAME.$$"
  if ! mkdir -p -m 700 "$XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR"; then
    error "temporary directory $XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR already exists"
    exit 4
  fi
  AUTHFILE=$(mktemp -p "$XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR" Xauthority)
fi

to

# If the user did not specify an X authorization file to use, set up a temporary
# directory to house one.
if [ -z "$AUTHFILE" ]; then
   XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
   if ! mkdir -p -m 700 "$XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR"; then
     error "temporary directory $XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR already exists"
     exit 4
   fi
   AUTHFILE=$(mktemp "$XVFB_RUN_TMPDIR/Xauthority")
 fi

I solved my problem, hopefully you will too.
Good luck.

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