What Tools Do I Need to Develop in Actionscript (In Linux)

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.

compiling actionscript in linux

Download the free/opensource Flex 3 SDK. This includes an ActionScript3 compiler. Run the compiler like this:

mxmlc MyAs3File.as

How to write Flash Action Scripts in Linux machine?

You have several options for compiling Flash applications:

1. Flex SDK, available for free from Adobe's site.
2. Haxe, an Actionscript-like language that can compile to SWF (as well as JavaScript and PHP).
3. MTASC, a compiler for Actionscript 2

For editors and IDEs, you have some options too:

1. Flex Builder beta for Linux -- based on Eclipse
2. Your favorite code editor. Just compile from the command line

The OSFlash Projects page has a list of more compilers, Eclipse plugins, and editors you can check out.

Compiler for actionscript 3 on Linux?

The easiest way to compile and test out ActionScript is to use Wonderfl. It is a web-based Flash IDE that will compile ActionScript and allow you to view and download the resulting SWF.

To develop on your own machine, you can use the Flex SDK, which can be downloaded from Adobe Open Source. This includes mxmlc, the command-line ActionScript compiler. You can find more information on using mxmlc in the Flex documentation. You could also try FB4Linux, a project that ports the Flash Builder IDE to Linux.

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.

What are the best Open Source tools for developing Flash applications? What are the best places to start learning?

If you are going to be targeting mobile devices (or the Wii) you will probably want to stick to Flash 7.

Adobe still doesn't have a Flash 9 SDK available to those (embedded/mobile) platforms. The newest SDK is FlashLite 3 which supports Flash 8.

Anything build before or around Oct. '07 would most likely still be using the Flash 7 SDK though.

Of course, if you are only developing for Mac/Win/Linux then none of that really matters.

I've always been of the opinion that if you don't need any of the new features or bug fixes it's generally best to stick with the slightly older but more compatible versions. That applies to pretty much any development.

How to create Flash animations / movies on Linux?

FLA is a proprietary format for Flash CS and earlier files. No, you cannot use them with Flex compiler, because the later is an OOS software. But you can tell your friend to avoid using them. It is in fact very common to use them only to generate graphic assets, but not the code. The typical workflow is to compile SWC or SWF to use as a library and to write the code in another editor.

Anyways, some practical things:

Developing AS3 proper, you can use Intellij IDEA (some people even like it and use on other OS then Linux, to be honest, I'm not a big fan of it, but it is of the same quality as the most industry-standard level IDEs)

Your another option (which I'm using) Some good soul "ported" Flash Builder for Linux (Flash Builder is originally an Eclipse plugin developed by Adobe). It's story on Linux is fogged by a mire of inconsequential decisions. Once there was a trial version, but Adobe never released it for Linux. The trial expired, then Adobe granted continuation for the trial version. Later, they seemed to abandon the product entirely. I'm not sure of its current status, but you can find it here: https://code.google.com/p/fb4linux/

Your another option, absolutely legal, but problematic: FlashDevelop, it runs considerably well in virtualization and the devs made an effort to ensure the best they can that the virtualized version runs fine. It also runs (to an extend...) under Wine. I tried the later, but I tried it a lot time ago, it was far from being perfect, but it was workable. Here's the thread at FD forum on this: http://flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7621

FDT (from Powerflashers, a commercial IDE based on Eclipse) is said to run on Linux - never tried.

What I also used: Emacs with actionscrip-mode - it is barely a syntax highlighter. While using it I added some functions to run the compiler and debugger, but they are too crappy to share them :) seriously. So I won't.

More options:

Haxe, is another language that compiles to SWF. Less well-known, but considerably more advanced and more modern language. Besides compiling to Flash does a whole bunch of other things. I've seen it used inside MonoDevelop http://haxe.org/com/ide/monodevelop (haven't used myself). Similarly, it should be possible to use it inside FDT.

Haxe mode for Emacs (I'm currently trying to improve it, but it's not there yet), hopefully, in a couple of month it will be. Here's what I've gotten for now: https://code.google.com/p/haxe-mode/

Graphics:

It seems unlikely that you can find an editor matched to Flash CS in terms of editing vector graphics for Flash, but MXMLC (Flex compiler) can fairly well compile SVG. You can thus use Inkscape to produce some non-animated graphics... but YMMV

Is it possible to develop a Flash application using only Open Source?

Good question!

I've seen a list of alternatives on the Inkscape Wiki, but I haven't evaluated them yet.

As @LordCover mentions, you could use something like as3swf for the timeline, but I imagine, unless you build a tool to replicate the Flash timeline, it would be pretty cumbersome.

I know you mentioned something free and hopefully open source, I'm looking forward to see a good answer too. But, what I was thinking is, maybe, depending on how much time it would save you by using a tool meant for the job vs. something hacked together, in case there isn't anything better, maybe you could buy an older version of Flash, like Flash MX, which should be a lot cheaper than the current version. This way could create both tweens(motion/shape) and frame by frame animations. Then you could name your movieClips containing animations to control them from FlashDevelop (either loading them or using the [Embed] metadata tag). Since Flash MX is so old, it should also run on Linux through Wine.

Another important point is, what kind of animations do you need to use in your FlashDevelop project ? If it's just motion tweens(alpha, x,y,rotation, etc.) I think embedded assets(swf, png, svg) animated with a tweening library like TweenLite which also has a TimelineLite class for nicely sequencing tweens would work well.

If it's nice hand drawings animated frame by frame, maybe an illustration tool that could export individual drawings as pdf pages and PDF2SWF from swftools to get a swf.

These are my 2 pence,
Looking forward to see the best solution.

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