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

Question

Hi,

I would like to develop Adobe Flex applications using Linux and a free environment. I'd prefer a free as in freedom alternative, but as in beer would work as well. ;-)

Are any of you developing Adobe Flex rich internet applications using such an environment? Or should I face the "facts" that Flex Builder is an essential tool for Flex development and that I'm more or less lost without it?

Answer 1

I'm afraid so. You can use the command-line tools directly of course and for pure AS coding this is OK since FB isn't that great on the refactoring front. But for MXML, the visual editor is a real plus.

You could try FlashDevelop but personally I found it to be terrible a year ago.

Answer 2

Hi,

Personally I only have experience with the free aplha release of Flex builder for Linux built on Eclipse. But I must say it is already pretty stable and it provides most features found in the full releases for mac osx and windows. Perhaps the most annoying thing that's missing is the gui editor to quickly lay out your forms.

If you are looking for another option, however, maybe this will be of any help: http://www.williambrownstreet.net/wordpress/?p=78

It's not an IDE though

Answer 3

I tried the first alpha version (current is 3) of the Flex Builder under Ubuntu and it was just okay, but not useable for productive (just alpha)
FlashDevelop works only under windows, maybe with wine... and in my opinion it's not a good IDE
FDT is on eye level with the Flex Builder but also not free and I don't know if it runs innately on Linux.

It's some kind of wired but I run a windows installation in VirtualBox and there I use the FlexBuilder...

Answer 4

If you create a set up using the flex-mojos maven plugin you can set up a build environment very easily without the need to have a flex builder license. Then you are able to use any text editor to edit Action Script and run a compile along with FlexUnit tests by simply calling mvn package.

Answer 5

I dont really think that MXML visual editor is a plus. I can live without it. However I am writing some emacs extensions to support .as files. Its very similar to java-mode and I need some help writing the semantic bovinator parts of the .as file. I am not aware of any public BNF file for ActionScript. I am not a compiler guy. My knowledge of these tools are at best primitive and exploratory. I would give anything to have a free (in speech) development environment for Flex. All in favor of an actionscript major mode for emacs, say Aye.

Answer 6

Try the official Adobe Flex Builder Linux Alpha:

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

I haven't used it yet, but I'm definitely planning on doing it.

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

I just use jEdit and the free Flex SDK for Flex development on Mac OS X and I've been as happy as Larry (however happy he is).

I've added a couple of links below that point to resources for configuring jEdit for AS3 development if you wanna go down that road. AFAIK, what this setup is missing in comparison to Flex Builder is at least code completion, the visual MXML editor and the profiler feature.

• Software over the Rainbow: ActionScript 3 syntax highlighting for jEdit
• HiveMinds Magazine: Using jEdit for Adobe Flex
• Turdhead: jEdit and Actionscript: the collected files
• The "jEdit" category from my blog

Answer 9

I use Emacs along with a custom hack to support fcsh (Flex compiler shell) for fast recompile times.

fcsh-compile can be found at this page along with a blog entry.

Answer 10

You can use plugin fb4linux for eclipse in http://code.google.com/p/fb4linux/ It run perfectly in eclipse 3.6 helios, you can choose flex 3 or flex 4 sdk and you can't recognize this plugin with Flex Builder stand alone verson of Adobe with hight light, auto complete code... good luck.

Answer 11

You can get a (kinda) functional Flex environment in Linux with Eclipse and FDT. You can find instructions here.

Answer 12

You can check out the fb4linux solution from this torrent: http://www.alivetorrents.com/torrent/8844946/flex-4-in-eclipse-3.6.0-for-linux

Contains Eclipse Helios with FB4Linux. Runs really fast.