actionscript development on mac

Question

I know of FlashDevelop for windows but how about developing actionscript or haxe on a mac? besides flex plugin for eclipse, flex builder and FDT is there anny good IDE out there for actionscript development on mac? I would really like to se a good plugin for netbeans but it looks like all the projects on making something like this has halted.

I have tryide using MacVim with various plugins but i never get it to work and it looks to be a hard learning curve to get starting using vim.

What is people using to develop actionscript/haxe on a mac?

Answer 1

I use TextMate with the ActionScript bundle. But, that is a far cry from a decent development environment.

FlashBuilder or FDT are probably the best options. I've spent a lot of time looking for a good free option - though I haven't done a check in the last 6 months, or so. The actual Flash IDE might be the best no-additional-cost option, if you use Flash.

There is supposedly a way to set up your environment to use XCode, a stand-alone compiler, and one or two other things, but I could never find good documentation or evidence of someone actually getting things working.

There is, or was, a Mac version of SePy, but it was horrible, as of a year and a half ago when I gave up on it.

I've been using FlashBuilder on my work machine for Flex work, but I think I'll start using it on my personal machine for Flash work. Just haven't come across anything else that even approaches a modern dev environment for Flash.

Sorry I don't have more helpful information. Would love to hear someone say different.

UPDATE: Found some so-so info on setting up various elements of a full development environment on Mac, using free tools. Doesn't look like a lot has happened on this front in the last two years.

OpenCode - AS2 and AS3 language definitions for XCode. This goes back to 2006, but may still be completely useful.

Xcode and the Flex SDK - A tutorial on setting up a code and compile environment with XCode and the mxml compiler. Author notes that the information may not be 100% accurate and lost interest once he started using FlexBuilder.

Make Xcode a Full Featured Actionscript IDE - FlaXIDE - A tutorial on setting up a full dev environment with opensource tools. Last updated in 2006. Could be modified to work with current tools (i.e. haxe instead of mtasc).

Flex Support for Xcode 3 - Somewhat more recent info on using Xcode as an AS editor. Posted November of 2007.

Core SWF: Flex/AS3 for Xcode - Even more recent info. This seems to be the latest thing going for using open source or free tools to build an AS dev environment on the Mac. Posted July of 2008. This project is up on Google Code and contributors are welcomed.

Answer 2

I have heard good things about IntelliJ IDEA lately but haven't really tried it out myself. I use TextMate, the AS3 bundle and Flash CS4.

The best thing would probably be if FlashDevelop was ported to Mac, but as I understand it, that is not about to happen, despite years of requests for it.

Answer 3

For haXe, I'm using gedit on both mac and ubuntu. There is a plugin for haXe which includes syntax highlight and code completion.

For installing the plug-in on Mac, put the folder "haxecodecompletion" and the file "haxecodecompletion.gedit-plugin" inside "/Applications/gedit.app/Contents/Resources/lib/gedit-2/plugins". Similar for the syntax highlight but a different folder.

Answer 4

Check out the "sugar-hx" textmate bundle. There's an overview here: http://haxe.org/com/ide/textmate/sugar_hx_textmate

It includes the compiler-based contextual autocompletion, import helpers, build helpers, and output embedding for swf and js.